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ARTISTS   PAST  AND   PRESENT 


^2>  t^t  S>anie  ^tttbat 


The  Works  of  James  McNeill  Whistler.     Illustrated  with 

Many  Reproductions  of  Etchings,  Lithographs,  Pastels  and  Paint- 
ings, 6J  X  9^  Inches.     Boxed,   $4.00   Net.     (Postage    32  cents.) 

A  study  of  Whistler  and  his  works,  including  etchings,  lithographs,  pastels, 
water-colors,  p>aintings,  landscapes.  Also  a  chapter  on  Whistler  s  "  Theory 
of  Art." 

The  Same.  —  Limited  Edition  de  Luxe.  The  Limited  Edition 
of  the  Above  Work,  Illustrated  with  Additional  Examples 
on  Japan  and  India  Paper.  Printed  on  Van  Gelder  Hand- 
made Paper,  with  Wide  Margins.  Limited  to  250  Numbered 
and  Signed  Copies,  of  which  a  few  are  left  unsold.  Boxed, 
$15.00  Net.     (Postage  Extra.) 

The  Art  of  William  Blake.  Uniquely  and  Elaborately  Illus- 
trated. Size  7§iioJ  Inches.  Wide  Margins.  Boxed,  $3.50 
Net.     (Postage  25  cents.) 

A  volume  of  great  distinction,  discussing  the  art  of  Blake  in  several  un- 
usual phases,  and  dwelUng  importantly  upon  his  Manuscript  Sketch  Book, 
to  which  the  author  has  had  free  access,  and  from  which  the  publishers  have 
drawn  freely  for  illustrations,  many  of  which  have  never  been  published 
before. 


Dans  la  Loge 
From  a  painting  by  Mary  Cassatt 


Artists  Past  and  Present 


RANDOM    STUDIES 


BY 

ELISABETH    LUTHER    GARY 

Author  of  "  The  Art  of  William  Blake"  "  Whistler ,"  Etc. 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW   YORK 

MOFFAT,  YARD  &  COMPANY 
1909 


Copyright,  1 909,  by 

MOFFAT,  YARD  &  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 


All  rights  reserved 
Published,  September,  1909 


The  Plimpton  Press  Norwood  Mass.  US. A  ■ 


CONTENTS 


I.  Antoine  Louis  Barye 

II.  The  Art  of  Mary  Cassatt      .  , 

III.  Max   Klinger         .... 

IV.  Alfred  Stevens      .... 

V.  A  Sketch  in  Outline  of  Jacques  Callot 

VI.  Carlo  Crivelli      .... 

VII.  The  Cassel  Gallery 

VIII.  Fantin-Latour       .... 

IX.  Carl  Larsson         .... 

X.  Jan  Steen  .... 

XL  One  Side  of  Modern  German  Painting 

XII.  Two  Spanish  Painters   . 


25 

37 

49 

61 
81 

95 

109 
119 
131 
143 
165 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

Dans  la  Loge Frontispiece 

From  a  painting  by  Mary  Cassatt  Faring 

Page 

Portrait  of  Antoine  Louis  Barye 2 

From  a  painting  by  f.  F.  Millet 

Lion  devouring  a  Doe 6 

Bull  thrown  to  Earth  by  a  Bear •    .        6 

From  a  bronze  by  Barye 

A  Lioness 8 

From  a  bronze  by  Barye 

The  Prancing  Bull .       10 

From  a  bronze  by  Barye 

Panther  seizing  a  Deer       12 

From  a  bronze  by  Barye 

The  Lion  and  the  Serpent 16 

From  a  bronze  by  Barye 

Asian  Elephant  crushing  Tiger 20 

From  a  bronze  by  Barye 

Child  Resting        28 

From  an  etching  by  Mary  Cassatt 

On  the  Balcony 32 

From  a  painting  by  Mary  Cassatt 
vii 


viii  LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

Fadng 
Page 

Woman  with  a  Fan 34 

From  a  painting  by  Mary  Cassatt 

Beethoven 38 

From  a  statue  in  colored  marble  by  Max  Klinger 

Cassandra 44 

From  a  statue  in  colored  marble  by  Max  Klinger 

L'Atelier 52 

From  a  painting  by  Alfred  Stevens 

Portrait  of  Jacques  Callot 68 

Engraved  by   Vosterman  after  the  painting  of  Van  Dyck 

St.  Dominic 84 

From  a  panel  by  Carlo  Crivelli 

St.  George 86 

From  a  panel  by  Carlo  Crivelli 

Pieta 88 

From  a  panel  by  Carlo  Crivelli 

A  Panel  by  Carlo  Crivelli  (a) 90 

A  Panel  by  Carlo  Crivelli  (b) 92 

Saskia 98 

From  a  portrait  by  Rembrandt 

Nicholas  Bruyningh 102 

From  a  portrait  by  Rembrandt 

Portrait  of  Mme.  Maitre 112 

From  a  painting  by  Fantin-Latour 

My  Family 120 

From  a  painting  by  Carl  Larsson 

A  Painting  by  Carl  Larsson 126 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS  ix 

Fadng 
Page 

Peasant  Women  of  Dachauer ....     148 

From  a  painting  by  Leibl 

Fiddling  Death 154 

From  a  portrait  by  Arnold  Boecklin 

The  Swimmers 166 

From  a  painting  by  Sorolla 

The  Bath  —  Javea 168 

From  a  painting  by  Sorolla 

The  Sorceresses  of  San  Milan 170 

From  a  painting  by  Zuloaga 

The  Old  Boulevardier 172 

From  a  painting  by  Zuloaga 

Mercedes 174 

From  a  painting  by  Zuloaga 


ARTISTS   PAST  AND   PRESENT 


Antoine  Louis  Barye 

AT  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art  are  two  pictures 
by  the  Florentine  painter  of  the  fifteenth  century 
called  Piero  di  Cosimo.  They  represent  hunting  scenes, 
and  the  figures  are  those  of  men,  women,  fauns,  satyrs, 
centaurs,  and  beasts  of  the  forests,  fiercely  struggling  to- 
gether. As  we  observe  the  lion  fastening  his  teeth  in  the 
flesh  of  the  boar,  the  bear  grappling  with  his  human  slayer, 
and  the  energy  and  determination  of  the  creatures  at 
bay,  our  thought  involuntarily  bridges  a  chasm  of  four 
centuries  and  calls  up  the  image  of  the  Barye  bronzes 
in  which  are  displayed  the  same  detachment  of  vision, 
the  same  absence  of  sentimentality,  the  same  vigor  and 
intensity  if  not  quite  the  same  strangeness  of  imagination. 
It  is  manifestly  unwise  to  carry  the  parallel  very  far,  yet 
there  is  still  another  touch  of  similarity  in  the  beautiful 
surfaces.  Piero*s  fine,  delicate  handling  of  pigment  is 
in  the  same  manner  of  expression  as  Barye's  exquisite 
manipulation  of  his  metal  after  the  casting,  his  beautiful 
thin  patines  that  do  not  suppress  but  reveal  sensitive 


2  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

line  and  subtle  modulation.  We  know  little  enough  of 
Piero  beyond  what  his  canvases  tell  us.  Of  Barye  we 
naturally  know  more,  although  everything  save  what  his 
work  confides  of  his  character  and  temperament  is  of 
secondary  importance,  and  he  is  interesting  to  moderns, 
especially  as  the  father  of  modern  animal  sculpture,  and 
not  for  the  events  of  his  quiet  life. 

Antoine  Louis  Barye,  born  at  Paris  September  15, 
1796,  died  June  25,  1875,  ^"  *^^  same  year  with  Corot 
and  at  the  same  age.  The  circumstances  under  which 
he  began  his  career  have  been  told  in  detail  by  more  than 
one  biographer,  but  it  would  be  difficult  rightly  to  esti- 
mate the  importance  and  singularity  of  his  work  without 
some  review  of  them.  His  father  was  a  jeweler  of  Lyons, 
who  settled  in  Paris  before  Antoine  was  born,  and  whose 
idea  of  education  for  his  son  was  to  place  him  at  less  than 
fourteen  with  an  engraver  of  military  equipments  from 
whom  he  learned  to  engrave  on  steel  and  other  metals, 
and  later  with  a  jeweler  from  whom  he  learned  to  make 
steel  matrixes  for  molding  reliefs  from  thin  metals.  A  cer- 
tain stress  has  been  laid  on  this  lack  of  schooling  in  the  con- 
ventional sense  of  the  word,  but  it  is  difficult  to  see  that 
it  did  much  harm,  since  Barye,  though  he  was  not  a  cor- 
rect writer  of  French,  was  a  great  reader,  keenly  intelli- 
gent in  his  analysis  of  the  knowledge  he  gained  from  books, 
and  with  extraordinary  power  of  turning  it  to  his   own 


From  the  collection  of  the  late  Cyrus  J.  Lawrence,  Esq 

Portrait  of  Antoine  Louis  Barye 
From  a  painting  by  J.  F.  Millet 


ANTQINE  LOUIS  BARYE  3 

uses.  Such  a  mind  does  not  seriously  miss  the  advan- 
tages offered  by  a  formal  training,  and  it  might  fairly  be 
argued  that  the  manual  skill  developed  at  the  work-bench 
was  in  the  long  run  more  valuable  to  him  than  the  abstract 
knowledge  which  he  might  have  acquired  in  school  could 
possibly  have  been.  Be  that  as  it  may,  up  to  the  time  of 
his  marriage  in  1823  ^^  ^^^  ^  varied  apprenticeship. 
At  sixteen  he  was  drawn  as  a  conscript  and  was  first 
assigned  to  the  department  where  maps  in  relief  are 
modeled.  Before  he  was  twenty-one  he  was  working 
with  a  sculptor  called  Bosio,  and  also  in  the  studio  of  the 
painter,  Baron  Gros.  He  studied  Lamarck,  Cuvier  and 
Buffon.  He  competed  five  times  for  the  Prix  de  Rome 
at  the  Salon,  once  in  the  section  of  medals  and  four  times 
in  the  section  of  sculpture,  succeeding  once  (in  the  first 
competition)  in  gaining  a  second  prize.  He  then  went 
back  to  the  jeweler's  bench  for  eight  years,  varying  the 
monotony  of  his  work  by  modeling  independently  small 
reliefs  of  Eagle  and  Serpenty  Eagle  and  Antelopey  Leopard, 
Panthery  and  other  animals. 

In  1 83 1  he  sent  to  the  Salon  of  that  year  the  Tiger  de- 
vouring a  Gavial  of  the  Ganges,  a  beautiful  little  bronze, 
seven  and  a  half  inches  high,  which  won  a  Second  Medal 
and  was  bought  by  the  Government  for  the  Luxembourg. 
This  was  the  beginning  of  his  true  career.  In  the  same 
Salon  was  exhibited  his  Martyrdom  of  St.  Sebastian,  but 


4  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PJIESENT 

the  powerful  realism  and  energy  of  the  animal  group 
represented  what  henceforth  was  to  be  Barye's  char- 
acteristic achievement,  the  realization,  that  is,  of  what 
the  Chinese  call  the  "movement  of  Hfe;"  the  strange 
reality  of  appearance  that  is  never  produced  by  imitation 
of  nature  and  that  makes  the  greatness  of  art.  The  tiger 
clutches  its  victim  with  great  gaunt  paws,  its  eyes  are 
fixed  upon  the  prey,  its  body  is  drawn  together  with 
tense  muscles,  its  tail  is  curled,  the  serpent  is  coiled  about 
the  massive  neck  of  its  destroyer  with  large  undulating 
curves.  The  touch  is  everywhere  certain,  the  compo- 
sition is  dignified,  and  the  group  as  an  exhibition  of 
extraordinary  knowledge  is  noteworthy, 

A  lithograph  portrait  of  Barye  by  Gigoux,  made  at 
about  this  time,  shows  a  fine  head,  interested  eyes,  a  firm 
mouth  and  a  determined  chin.  His  chief  qualities  were 
perseverance,  scientific  curiosity,  modesty  and  pride,  and 
that  indomitable  desire  for  perfection  so  rarely  encoun- 
tered and  so  precious  an  element  in  the  artist's  equipment. 
He  was  little  of  a  talker,  little  of  a  writer,  infinitely  studi- 
ous, somewhat  reserved  and  cold  in  manner,  yet  fond  of 
good  company  and  not  averse  to  good  dinners.  Guil- 
laume  said  of  him  that  he  had  the  genius  of  great  science 
and  of  high  morality,  which  is  the  best  possible  definition 
in  a  single  phrase  of  his  artistic  faculty.  He  had  the 
kind  of  sensitiveness,  or  self-esteem,  if  you  will,  that  fre- 


ANTOINE  LOUIS  BARYE  5 

quently  goes  with  a  mind  confident  of  its  merits,  but  not 
indifferent  to  criticism  or  sufficiently  elevated  and  aloof 
to  dispense  with  resentment.  In  1832  he  sent  to  the 
Salon  his  Lion  Crushing  a  Serpent,  and  in  1833  he  sent 
a  dozen  animal  sculptures,  a  group  of  medallions  and 
six  water-colors.  That  year  he  was  made  chevalier  of 
the  Legion  of  Honour,  but  the  following  year  nine  groups 
made  for  the  Duke  of  Orleans  were  rejected  by  the  Salon 
jury,  and  again  in  1836  several  small  pieces  were  rejected, 
although  the  Seated  Lion,  later  bought  by  the  govern- 
ment, was  accepted.  The  reasons  for  the  rejections  are 
not  entirely  clear,  but  Barye  was  an  innovator,  and  in  the 
field  of  art  the  way  of  the  innovator  is  far  harder  than 
that  of  the  transgressor.  Charges  of  commercialism  were 
among  those  made  against  him,  and  he  —  the  least  com- 
mercial of  men  —  took  them  deeply  to  heart.  His  bitter- 
ness assumed  a  self-respecting  but  an  inconvenient  and 
unprofitable  form,  as  he  made  up  his  mind  to  exhibit 
thereafter  only  in  his  own  workshop,  a  resolution  to  which 
he  held  for  thirteen  years.  After  the  rejection  of  his 
groups  in  1834  he  happened  to  meet  Jules  Dupre,  who 
expressed  his  disgust  with  the  decision.  "It  is  quite 
easy  to  understand,"  Barye  replied,  *T  have  too  many 
friends  on  the  jury."  This  touch  of  cynicism  indicates 
the  ease  with  which  he  was  wounded,  but  it  was  equally 
characteristic  of  him  that  in  planning  his  simple  revenge 


6  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

he  hurt  only  himself.  He  did  indeed  refrain  from  send- 
ing his  bronzes  to  the  Salon  and  he  did  act  as  his  own 
salesman,  and  the  result  was  the  incurrence  of  a  heavy 
debt.  To  meet  this  he  was  obliged  to  sell  all  his  wares 
to  a  founder  who  wanted  them  for  the  purpose  of  repeating 
them  in  debased  reproductions.  His  own  care  in  obtain- 
ing the  best  possible  results  in  each  article  that  he  pro- 
duced, his  reluctance  to  sell  anything  of  the  second  class, 
and  his  perfectly  natural  dislike  to  parting  with  an  es- 
pecially beautiful  piece  under  any  circumstances,  did  not, 
of  course,  work  to  his  business  advantage,  although  the 
amateurs  who  have  bought  the  bronzes  that  came  from 
his  own  refining  hand  have  profited  by  it  immensely. 
It  would  be  a  mistake,  however,  to  think  of  him  as  a 
crushed  or  even  a  deeply  misfortunate  man.  He  simply 
was  poor  and  not  appreciated  by  the  general  public 
according  to  his  merits.  After  1850,  however,  he  had 
enough  orders  from  connoisseurs,  many  of  them  Ameri- 
cans, and  also  from  the  French  government  to  make  it 
plain  that  his  importance  as  an  artist  was  firmly  estab- 
lished at  least  in  the  minds  of  a  few.  He  sold  his  work 
at  low  prices  which  since  his  death  have  been  trebled  and 
quadrupled,  in  fact,  some  of  his  proofs  have  increased 
fifty-fold,  but  the  fact  that  he  was  not  overwhelmed  with 
orders  gave  him  that  precious  leisure  to  spend  upon  the 
perfecting  of  his  work  which,  we  may  fairly  assume,  was 
worth  more  to  him  than  money. 


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ANTOINE  LOUIS  BARYE  7 

Nor  was  he  entirely  without  honor  in  his  own  country. 
At  the  Universal  Exposition  of  1855  he  received  the  Grand 
Medal  of  Honour  in  the  section  of  artistic  bronzes,  and 
in  the  same  year  the  Officer's  Cross  of  Legion  of  Honour 
—  a  dignity  that  is  said  to  have  reached  poor  Rousseau 
only  when  he  was  too  near  death  to  receive  the  messen- 
gers. In  1868  Barye  was  made  Member  of  the  Institute, 
although  two  years  earlier  he  had  been  humiliated  by 
having  his  application  refused.  And  from  America,  in 
addition  to  numerous  proofs  of  the  esteem  in  which  he 
was  held  there  by  private  amateurs,  he  received  through 
Mr.  Walters  in  1875  ^^  order  to  supply  the  Corcoran 
Gallery  at  Washington  with  an  example  of  every  bronze 
he  had  made.  This  last  tribute  moved  him  to  tears, 
and  he  replied,  "Ah!  Monsieur  Walters,  my  own  country 
has  never  done  anything  like  that  for  me!"  These  cer- 
tainly were  far  from  being  trivial  satisfactions,  and  Barye 
had  also  reaped  a  harvest  of  even  subtler  joys.  One  likes 
to  think  of  him  in  Barbizon,  living  in  cordial  intimacy 
with  Diaz  and  Rousseau  and  Millet  and  the  great  Daumier. 
Here  he  had  sympathy,  excellent  talk  of  excellent  things, 
the  company  of  artists  working  as  he  did,  with  profound 
sincerity  and  intelligence,  and  he  had  a  chance  himself 
to  paint  in  the  vast  loneliness  of  the  woods  where  he  could 
let  his  imagination  roam,  and  could  find  a  home  for  his 
tigers  and  lions  and  bears  studied  in  menageries  and  in 


8  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

the  Jardin  des  Plantes.  It  is  pleasant  also  to  think  of 
him  among  the  five  and  twenty  Amis  du  Vendredi  dining 
together  at  little  wineshops  on  mutton  and  cheese  and 
wine  with  an  occasional  pate  given  as  a  treat  by  some 
member  in  funds  for  the  moment.  He  was  not  above 
enthusiasm  for  "wn  certain  pate  de  maquereau  de  Calais'' 
and  he  was  fond  of  the  theater  and  of  all  shows  where 
animals  were  to  be  seen.  It  is  pleasantest  of  all  to  think 
of  him  at  his  work,  the  beauty  of  which  he  knew  and  the 
ultimate  success  of  which  he  could  hardly  have  doubted. 

In  what  does  the  extraordinary  quality  of  this  work 
consist  ^  The  question  is  not  difficult  to  answer,  since, 
like  most  of  the  truly  great  artists,  Barye  had  clear-cut 
characteristics  among  which  may  be  found  those  that 
separate  him  from  and  raise  him  above  his  contempo- 
raries. Scientific  grasp  of  detail  and  artistic  generaliza- 
tion are  to  be  found  in  all  his  work  where  an  animal  is 
the  subject,  and  this  combination  is  in  itself  a  mark  of 
greatness.  If  we  should  examine  the  exceptionally  fine 
collection  of  Barye  bronzes  belonging  to  the  late  Mr. 
Cyrus  J.  Lawrence,  and  consisting  of  more  than  a  hun- 
dred beautiful  examples,  or  the  fine  group  in  the  Cor- 
coran Gallery  at  Washington,  we  should  soon  learn  his 
manner  and  the  type  established  by  him  in  his  animal 
subjects.  In  the  presence  of  so  large  a  number  of  the 
works  of  a  single  artist,  certain  features  common  to  the 


03 


ANTOINE  LOUIS   BARYE  9 

whole  accomplishment  may  easily  be  traced.  One  domi- 
nating characteristic  in  this  case  is  the  ease  with  which 
the  anatomical  knowledge  of  the  artist  is  worn.  Even 
in  the  early  bronzes  the  execution  is  free,  large,  and  quite 
without  the  dry  particularity  that  might  have  been  ex- 
pected from  a  method  the  most  exacting  and  specific 
possible.  Barye  from  the  first  went  very  deeply  into  the 
study  of  anatomy,  examining  skeletons,  and  dissecting 
animals  after  death  to  gain  the  utmost  familiarity  with 
all  the  bones  and  muscles,  the  articulations,  the  fur  and 
skin  and  minor  details.  His  reading  of  Cuvier  and 
Lamarck  indicates  his  interest  in  theories  of  animal  life 
and  organism.  He  took,  also,  great  numbers  of  com- 
parative measurements  that  enabled  him  to  represent 
not  merely  an  individual  specimen  of  a  certain  kind  of 
animal,  but  a  type  which  should  be  true  in  general  as  well 
as  in  particular.  He  would  measure,  for  example,  the 
bones  of  a  deer  six  months  old  and  those  of  a  deer  six 
weeks  old,  carefully  noting  all  differences  in  order  to  form 
a  definite  impression  of  the  normal  measurements  of  the 
animal  at  different  ages.  He  made  comparative  draw- 
ings of  the  skulls  of  cats,  tigers,  leopards,  panthers,  the 
whole  feline  species,  in  short,  seeking  out  the  principles 
of  structure  and  noting  the  dissimilarities  due  to  differ- 
ences in  size.  He  made  innumerable  drawings  of  shoul- 
ders, heads,  paws,  nostrils,  ears,  carefully  recording  the 


10  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

dimensions  on  each  sketch.  Among  his  notes  was  found 
a  minute  description  of  the  characteristic  features  of  a 
blooded  horse. 

He  was  never  content  with  merely  an  external  obser- 
vation of  a  subject  when  he  had  it  in  his  power  to  penetrate 
the  secrets  of  animal  mechanism.  He  first  made  sketches 
of  his  subjects,  of  course,  but  frequently  he  also  modeled 
parts  of  the  animal  in  wax  on  the  spot  to  catch  the  char- 
acteristic movement.  His  indefatigable  patience  in  thus 
laying  the  groundwork  of  exact  knowledge  suggests  the 
thoroughness  of  the  old  Dutch  artists.  He  followed,  too, 
the  recommendation  of  Leonardo  —  so  dangerous  to  any 
but  the  strongest  mind  —  to  draw  the  parts  before  draw- 
ing the  whole,  to  "learn  exactitude  before  facility." 

A  story  is  told  of  a  visit  paid  him  by  the  sculptor  Jac- 
quemart:  "I  will  show  you  what  I  have  under  way,  just 
now,"  said  he  to  his  friend,  and  looking  about  his  studio 
for  a  moment,  drew  out  a  couple  of  legs  and  stood  them 
erect.  After  a  few  seconds  of  puzzled  thought  he  remem- 
bered the  whereabouts  of  the  other  members,  and  finally 
drew  out  the  head  from  under  a  heap  in  a  corner.  And 
the  statue  once  in  place  was  conspicuous  for  its  fine  sense 
of  unity.  It  was  not,  of  course,  this  meticulous  method, 
but  the  use  he  made  of  it,  that  led  Barye  to  his  great  re- 
sults. His  mind  was  strengthened  and  enriched  by  every 
fragment  of  knowledge  with  which  he  fed  it.     It  all  went 


From  the  collection  of  the  late  Cyrus  J.  Lawrence,  Esq. 

The  Prancing  Bull 

("tAUREAU    CAERE  ") 

From  a  bronze  by  Bar  ye 


ANTOINE  LOUIS  BARYE  11 

wholesomely  and  naturally  to  the  growth  of  his  artistic 
ideas,  and  he  does  not  appear  to  have  been  interested  in 
acquiring  knowledge  that  did  not  directly  connect  itself 
with  these  ideas.  By  his  perfect  familiarity  with  the 
facts  upon  which  he  built  his  conceptions  he  was  fitted 
to  use  them  intelligently,  omit  them  where  he  chose, 
exaggerate  them  where  he  chose,  minimize  them  where 
he  chose.  They  did  not  fetter  him;  they  freed  him;  and 
he  could  work  with  them  blithely,  unhampered  by  doubts 
and  inabilities.  It  is  most  significant  both  of  his  accuracy 
and  his  freedom  that  in  constructing  his  models  he  dis- 
pensed with  the  rigid  iron  skeleton  on  which  the  clay 
commonly  is  built.  Having  modeled  the  different  parts 
of  his  composition,  he  brought  them  together  and  sup- 
ported them  from  the  outside  by  means  of  crutches  and 
tringles  after  the  fashion  of  the  boat  builders,  thus  enabling 
himself  to  make  alterations,  corrections  and  revisions  to 
the  very  end  of  his  task.  The  definitive  braces  were  put 
in  place  only  at  the  moment  of  the  molding  in  plaster. 

For  small  models  he  preferred  to  use  wax  which  does 
not  dry  and  crack  like  the  clay.  He  also  sometimes 
covered  his  plaster  model  with  a  layer,  more  or  less  thick, 
of  wax,  upon  which  he  could  make  a  more  perfect  render- 
ing of  superficial  subtleties.  Occasionally,  as  in  the  in- 
stance of  The  Lion  Crushing  the  Serpent,  cast  by  Honore 
Gonon,  he  employed  the  process  called  a  cire  perdue y  in 


12  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

which  the  model  is  first  made  in  wax,  then  over  it  is  formed 
a  mold  from  which  the  wax  is  melted  out  by  heat.  The 
liquid  bronze  is  poured  into  the  matrix  thus  formed,  and 
when  this  has  become  cold  the  mold  is  broken  off,  leaving 
an  almost  accurate  reproduction  of  the  original  model, 
which  is  also,  of  course,  unique,  the  wax  model  and  the 
mold  both  having  been  destroyed  in  the  process.  Upon 
his  patines  he  lavished  infinite  care.  Theodore  Child  has 
given  an  excellent  description  of  the  difference  between 
this  final  enrichment  of  a  bronze  as  applied  by  a  master 
and  the  patine  of  commerce  "The  ideal  patine,^^  he  says, 
"is  an  oxydation  and  a  polish,  without  thickness,  as  it 
were,  a  delicate  varnish  or  glaze,  giving  depth  and  tone 
to  the  metal.  Barye's  green  patine  as  produced  by  him- 
self has  these  qualities  of  lightness  and  richness  of  tone, 
whereas  the  green  patine  of  the  modern  proofs  is  not  a 
patine,  not  an  oxydation,  but  an  absolute  application  of 
green  color  in  powder,  a  mise  en  couleur,  as  the  technical 
phrase  is.  In  places  this  patine  will  be  nearly  a  milli- 
meter thick  and  will  consequently  choke  up  all  dehcate 
modeling,  soften  all  that  is  sharp,  and  render  the  bronze 
dull,  mouy  heavy.  To  produce  Barye's  fine  green  patine, 
requires  time  and  patience,  and  for  commerical  bronze  is 
impracticable.  Barye,  however,  was  never  a  commercial 
man.  When  a  bronze  was  ordered  he  would  never  promise 
it  at  any  fixed  date;  he  would  ask  for  one  or  two  or  three 


G 
< 

z 


ANTOINE  LOUIS   BARYE  13 

months;  *he  did  not  know  exactly,  it  would  depend  on 
how  his  patine  came.'" 

His  patines  are  by  no  means  all  green;  some  of  them  are 
almost  golden  in  their  vitality  of  color  —  the  *' patine  me- 
daille"  as  in  The  Walking  Deer^  which  is  a  superb  ex- 
ample; some  are  dark  brown  approaching  black.  The 
most  beautiful  in  color  and  delicacy  which  I  have  seen 
is  that  on  Mr.  Lawrence's  Bull  Felled  by  a  Bear  (Taureau 
terrasse  par  un  ours)y  a  bronze  which  seems  to  me  in  many 
particulars  to  remain  a  masterpiece  unsurpassed  by  the 
more  violent  and  splendid  later  works.  Another  re- 
markable example  of  the  effect  of  color  possible  to  pro- 
duce by  a  patine  is  furnished  by  the  Lion  Devouring  a  Doe 
{Lion  devorant  une  biche)^  dated  1837.  The  green  lurking 
in  the  shadows  and  the  coppery  gleam  on  the  ridge  of  the 
spine,  the  thigh,  and  the  bristling  mane,  the  rich  yet  bright 
intermediate  tones,  give  a  wonderful  brilliancy  and  vi- 
tality to  the  magnificent  little  piece  in  which  the  ferocity 
of  nature  and  the  charm  and  lovableness  of  art  are  com- 
mingled. In  his  interesting  book  on  Barye,  published 
by  the  Barye  Monument  Association,  Mr.  De  Kay  has 
referred  to  this  work  as  an  example  of  Barye's  power  to 
reproduce  the  horrible  and  to  make  one's  blood  run  cold 
with  the  ferocity  of  the  destroying  beast.  It  seems  to  me, 
however,  that  it  is  one  of  the  pieces  in  which  Barye's 
power  to  represent  the  horrible  without  destroying  the 


14  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

peace  of  mind  to  be  found  in  all  true  art,  is  most  obvious. 
With  his  capacity  for  emphasizing  that  which  he  wishes 
to  be  predominant  in  his  composition  he  has  brought  out 
to  the  extreme  Hmit  of  expression  the  strength  of  the  Hon 
and  its  savage  interest  in  its  prey.  The  lashing  tail,  the 
wrinkled  nose,  the  concentrated  eyes  are  fully  significant 
of  the  mood  of  the  beast,  and  were  the  doe  equally  de- 
fined the  effect  would  be  disturbing.  But  the  doe, 
lying  on  the  ground,  is  treated  almost  in  bas-relief,  hardly 
distinguishable  against  the  massive  bulk  of  its  oppressor. 
The  appeal  is  not  to  pity,  but  to  recognition  of  the  force 
of  native  instincts.  Added  to  this  is  the  beauty,  subtly 
distinguished  and  vigorously  rendered,  of  the  large  curves 
of  the  splendid  body  of  the  lion.  Even  among  the  su- 
perb later  pieces  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  one  with 
greater  beauty  of  flowing  line  and  organic  composition. 
"  In  the  illustration  we  can  see  the  general  contour  from 
one  point  of  view,  but  we  cannot  see  the  rhythm  of  the 
curves  balancing  and  repeating  each  other  from  the  tip 
of  the  upHfted  tail  to  the  arch  of  the  great  neck.  Nor  is 
a  particle  of  energy  sacrificed  to  these  beautiful  contours. 
The  body  is  compact,  the  head  large  and  expressive  of 
power,  the  thick  paws  rest  with  weight  on  the  ground. 
There  is  none  of  the  pulHng  out  of  forms  so  often  employed 
to  give  grace  and  so  usually  suggestive  of  weakness.  The 
composition  is  at  once  absolutely  graceful  and  eloquent 


ANTOINE  LOUIS  BARYE  15 

of  immense  physical  force.  In  the  Panther  Seizing  a 
Deer  {Panthere  saisstssant  un  Cerf)y  one  of  the  largest  of 
the  animal  groups,  we  have  again  the  characteristic  double 
curves,  the  fine  play  of  line,  and  the  appropriate  fitting  of 
the  figures  into  a  long  oval,  and  also  the  minimizing  of 
the  cruelty  of  the  subject  by  the  reticent  art  with  which 
it  is  treated.  We  see  clearly  enough  the  angry  jaws,  the 
curled  tail,  the  weight  of  the  attacking  beast  falling  on 
the  head  of  its  victim,  dragging  it  toward  the  ground. 
Nothing  is  slighted  or  compromised.  We  see  even  the 
gash  in  the  flesh  made  by  the  panther's  claws  and  the 
drops  of  blood  trickling  from  the  wound.  But  we  have 
to  thank  Barye's  instinct  for  refined  conception  that  these 
features  of  the  work  do  not  claim  and  hold  our  attention 
which  is  absorbed  by  the  vital  line,  the  gracious  sweep 
of  the  contours,  the  lovely  surface,"  and  the  omission  of 
all  irrelevant  and  unreasonable  detail. 

Many  of  Barye's  subjects  included  the  human  figure 
and  in  a  few  instances  the  hufnan  figure  alone  preoccupied 
him.  Occasionally  he  was  very  successful  in  this  kind. 
The  small  silver  reproduction  of  Hercules  Carrying  a 
Boar  has  the  remarkable  quality  of  easy  force.  The  figure 
of  Hercules  is  without  exaggerated  muscles,  is  normally 
proportioned  and  quietly  modeled.  His  burden  rests 
lightly  on  his  shoulders,  and  his  free  long  stride  indicates 
that  the  labor  is  joy.     This  is  the  ancient,  not  the  modern 


1 6  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

tradition,  and  the  little  figure  corresponds,  curiously 
enough,  with  one  of  the  male  figures  in  the  Piero  di  Cosimo 
mentioned  at  the  beginning  of  this  article.  In  the  latter 
case  the  strong  man  is  engaged  in  combat  with  a  living 
animal,  but  he  carries  his  strength  with  the  same  assur- 
ance and  absence  of  effort  in  its  exercise.  Barye,  however, 
does  not  always  give  this  happy  impression  when  he  seeks 
to  represent  the  human  figure.  If  we  compare,  for  example, 
the  bronze  made  in  1840  for  the  Duke  of  Montpensier 
(Roger  Bearing  off  Angelica  on  the  Hippogriff)  with  any 
of  the  animal  groups  of  that  decade  or  earlier,  we  can 
hardly  fail  to  be  amazed  at  the  lack  of  unity  in  the  com- 
position and  the  distracting  multiplicity  of  the  details. 
If  we  compare  the  Hunt  of  the  Tiger  with  the  Asian  Ele- 
phant Crushing  Tiger  the  great  superiority  of  the  latter 
in  the  arrangement  of  the  masses,  the  dignity  of  the  pro- 
portions, and  in  economy  of  detail,  is  at  once  evident. 
The  figures  of  the  four  stone  groups  on  the  Louvre,  how- 
ever, have  a  certain  antique  nobility  of  design  and  withal 
a  naturalness  that  put  them  in  the  first  class  of  modern 
sculpture,  I  think. 

One  point  worthy  of  note  in  any  comparison  between 
Barye's  animals  and  his  human  beings  is  the  intensity 
and  subtlety  of  expression  in  the  former  and  the  absence 
of  any  marked  expression  in  the  latter.  His  men  are 
practically  masked.     No  passion  or  emotion   makes  its 


oq 


ANTOINE  LOUIS   BAR  YE  1 7 

impression  on  their  features.  Even  their  gestures,  vio- 
lent though  they  may  be,  seem  inspired  from  without  and 
not  by  the  impulse  of  their  own  feelings.  His  animals 
on  the  contrary  show  many  phases  of  what  must  be  called, 
for  lack  of  a  more  exact  word,  psychological  expression. 
A  striking  instance  of  this  is  found  in  the  contrast  between 
the  sketch  for  The  Lion  Crushing  the  Serpent  and  the 
finished  piece.  In  the  sketch  there  is  terror  in  the  lion's 
face,  his  paw  is  raised  to  strike  at  the  reptile,  his  tail  is 
uplifted  and  lashing,  the  attitude  and  expression  are  those 
of  terror  mingled  with  rage  and  the  serpent  appears  the 
aggressor.  In  the  finished  bronze  the  lion  is  calmer  and 
in  obvious  possession  of  the  field.  The  fierce  claws  push- 
ing out  from  their  sheathing,  the  eyes  that  seem  to  snarl 
with  the  mouth,  the  massive  paw  resting  on  the  serpent's 
coiled  body  combine  to  give  a  subtle  impression  of  certain 
mastery,  and  the  serpent  is  unquestionably  the  victim 
and  defendant  in  the  encounter.  It  is  by  such  intuitive 
reading  of  the  aspect  of  animals  of  diverse  kinds,  that 
Barye  awakens  the  imagination  and  leads  the  mind  into 
the  wilderness  of  the  untamed  world.  He  is  perhaps 
most  himself  when  depicting  moods  of  concentration.  The 
fashion  in  which  he  gathers  the  great  bodies  together  for 
springing  upon  and  holding  down  their  prey  is  absolutely 
unequaled  among  animal  sculptors.  His  mind  handled 
monumental  compositions  with  greater  success,  I  think, 


l8  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

than  compositions  of  the  Hghter  type  in  which  the  subject 
lay  at  ease  or  exhibited  the  pure  joy  of  living  which  we 
associate  with  the  animal  world. 

Two  exceptions  to  this  statement  come,  however,  at 
once  to  my  mind  —  the  delightful  Bear  in  his  Trough 
and  the  Prancing  Bull.  The  former  is  the  only  instance 
I  know  of  a  Barye  animal  disporting  itself  with  youthful 
irresponsibility,  and  the  innocence  and  humor  of  the 
little  beast  make  one  wish  that  it  had  not  occupied  this 
unique  place  in  the  list  of  Barye's  work.  The  Prancing 
Bull  also  is  a  conception  by  itself  and  one  of  which  Barye 
may  possibly  have  been  a  little  afraid.  With  his  extraor- 
dinary patience  it  is  not  probable  that  he  had  the  oppo- 
site quality  of  ability  to  catch  upon  the  fly,  as  it  were,  a 
passing  motion,  an  elusive  and  swiftly  fading  effect.  But 
in  this  instance  he  has  rendered  with  great  skill  the  cur- 
vetting spring  of  the  bull  into  the  air  and  the  lightness  of 
the  motion  in  contrast  with  the  weight  of  the  body.  This 
singular  lightness  or  physical  adroitness  he  has  caught 
also  in  his  representation  of  elephants,  the  Elephant  of 
Senegal  Running,  showing  to  an  especial  degree  the  agility 
of  the  animal  despite  its  enormous  bulk  and  ponderosity. 

While  Barye's  most  important  work  was  accomplished 
in  the  field  of  sculpture,  his  merits  as  a  painter  were  great. 
His  devotion  to  the  study  of  structural  expression  was  too 
stern  to  permit  him  to  lapse  into   mediocrity,  whatever 


ANTOINE  LOUIS  BARYE  19 

medium  he  chose  to  use,  and  the  animals  he  created,  or 
re-created,  on  canvas  are  as  thoroughly  understood,  as 
clearly  presented,  as  artistically  significant  as  those  in 
bronze.  With  every  medium,  however,  there  is,  of  course, 
a  set  of  more  or  less  undefinable  laws  governing  its  use. 
Wide  as  the  scope  of  the  artist  is  there  are  limits  to  his 
freedom,  and  if  he  uses  water-color,  for  example,  in  a 
manner  which  does  not  extract  from  the  medium  the 
highest  virtue  of  which  it  is  capable  he  is  so  much  the 
less  an  artist.  It  has  been  said  of  Barye  that  his  paint- 
ings were  unsatisfactory  on  that  score.  About  a  hundred 
pictures  in  oil  and  some  fifty  water-colors  have  been  put 
on  the  list  of  his  works.  Mr.  Theodore  Child  found  his 
execution  heavy,  uniform,  of  equal  strength  all  over,  and 
of  a  monotonous  impasto  which  destroys  all  aerial  per- 
spective. I  have  not  seen  enough  of  his  painting  in  oils 
either  to  contradict  or  to  acquiesce  in  this  verdict;  but  his 
water-colors  produce  a  very  different  impression  on  my 
mind.  He  uses  body-color  but  with  restraint  and  his 
management  of  light  and  shade  and  his  broad,  free  treat- 
ment of  the  landscape  background  give  to  his  work  in 
this  medium  a  distinction  quite  apart  from  that  inseparable 
from  the  beautiful  drawing.  In  the  painting  that  we  re- 
produce the  soft  washes  of  color  over  the  rocky  land 
bring  the  background  into  delicate  harmony  with  the  richly- 
tinted  figure  of  the  tiger  with  the  effect  of  variety  in  unity 


20  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

sought  for  and  obtained  by  the  masters  of  painting.  The 
weight  and  roundness  of  the  tiger's  body  is  brought  out 
by  the  firm  broad  outHne  which  Barye's  contemporary 
Daumier  is  so  fond  of  using  in  his  paintings,  the  interior 
modeling  having  none  of  the  emphasis  on  form  that  one 
looks  for  in  a  sculptor's  work.  In  his  paintings  indeed, 
even  more  than  in  his  sculpture,  Barye  shows  his  interest 
in  the  psychological  side  of  his  problem.  Here  if  ever  he 
sees  his  subject  whole,  in  all  its  relations  to  life.  The  vast 
sweep  of  woodland  or  desert  in  which  he  places  his  wild 
creatures,  the  deep  repose  commingled  with  the  potential 
ferocity  of  these  creatures,  their  separateness  from  man  in 
their  inarticulate  emotions,  their  inhuman  passions,  their 
withdrawn  powerfully  realized  lives,  their  self-sufficiency, 
their  part  in  nature  —  all  this  becomes  vivid  to  us  as  we 
look  at  his  paintings  and  we  are  aware  that  the  portrayal 
of  animal  life  went  far  deeper  with  Barye  than  a  mere 
anatomical  grasp  of  his  subject.  Corot  did  not  find  his 
tigers  suflUciently  poetic  and  altered,  it  is  said,  the  tiger 
drawn  for  one  of  his  own  paintings  until  he  succeeded  in 
giving  it  a  more  romantic  aspect.  Barye's  poetry,  how- 
ever, was  the  unalterable  poetry  of  life.  He  found  his 
inspiration  in  realities  but  that  is  not  to  say  that  his  re- 
alities were  external  ones.  He  excluded  nothing  belong- 
ing to  the  sentiment  of  his  subject  and  comparison  of  his 
work  with  that  of  other  animal  sculptors  and   painters 


C      1". 

X 


ANTOINE  LOUIS  BARYE  21 

deepens  one's  respect  for  the  penetrating  insight  with 
which  he  sought  his  truths. 

Since  Barye's  death  and  the  great  increase  in  the  prices 
of  his  work,  many  devices  have  been  used  to  sell  objects 
bearing  his  name,  but  not  properly  his  work.  For  ex- 
ample, he  produced  for  the  city  of  Marseilles  some  ob- 
jects in  stone  (designed  for  the  columns  of  the  gateway), 
which  were  never  done  in  bronze;  since  his  death  these 
have  been  reduced  in  size  and  produced  in  bronze  as  his 
work.  Works  of  the  younger  Barye  signed  by  the  great 
name  are  also  confused  with  those  of  the  father.  Further 
still,  to  the  confusion  of  inexperienced  collectors,  the 
bronzes  of  Mene,Fratin,and  Cain,  all  artists  of  importance, 
but  hardly  increasing  fame,  have  had  the  signatures 
erased  and  that  of  Barye  substituted.  It  is  therefore 
inadvisable  to  attempt  at  this  date  the  collection  of  Barye's 
bronzes  without  special  knowledge  or  advice.  The  great 
collections  of  early  and  fine  proofs  have  been  made.  At 
the  sale  of  his  effects  after  his  death  the  models  with  the 
right  of  reproduction  were  sold,  and  in  many  instances 
these  modern  proofs  are  on  the  market  bearing  the  name 
of  Barye,  with  no  indication  of  their  modernity.  Some 
of  these  are  so  cleverly  done  that  great  knowledge  is  re- 
quired to  detect  them,  and  if  they  were  sold  for  a  moder- 
ate price,  would  be  desirable  possessions.  Certain  dealers 
frankly  sell  a  modern  reproduction  as  modern  and  at  an 


22  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

appropriate  price,  but  I  know  of  one  only,  M.  Barbedienne, 
who  puts  a  plaque  with  his  initials  on  each  piece  produced 
by  him. 

During  Barye's  lifetime  he  had,  however,  in  his  employ, 
a  man  named  Henri,  who  possessed  his  confidence  to  a 
full  degree.  A  few  pieces  are  found  with  the  initial  of 
this  man,  showing  that  they  were  done  under  his  super- 
vision and  not  that  of  Barye,  but  whether  before  or  after 
the  death  of  the  latter  is  not  yet  determined. 


THE  ART  OF  MARY  CASSATT 


II 

The  Art  of  Mary  Cassatt 

OOME  fifteen  years  ago,  on  the  occasion  of  an  exhibition 
in  Paris  of  Miss  Cassatt's  work  a  French  critic 
suggested  that  she  was  then,  perhaps,  with  the  exception  of 
Whistler,  "the  only  artist  of  an  elevated,  personal  and 
distinguished  talent  actually  possessed  by  America." 
The  suggestion  no  doubt  was  a  rash  one,  since,  as  much 
personal  and  distinguished  work  by  American  artists  never 
leaves  this  country,  the  data  for  comparison  must  be  lack- 
ing to  a  French  critic;  but  it  is  certainly  true  that,  like 
Whistler,  Miss  Cassatt  early  struck  an  individual  note, 
looked  at  life  with  her  own  eyes,  and  respected  her  intel- 
lectual instrument  sufficiently  to  master  it  to  the  extent, 
at  least,  of  creating  a  style  for  herself.  Born  at  Pitts- 
burgh, Pennsylvania,  she  studied  first  at  the  Philadelphia 
Academy,  and  later  traveled  through  Spain,  Italy,  and 
Holland  in  search  of  artistic  knowledge  and  direction. 
In  France  she  came  to  know  the  group  of  painters  includ- 
ing Monet,  Renoir,  Pissarro  and  Degas,  and  especially 
influenced  by  the  work  of  Degas,  she  turned  to  him  for 

»5 


26  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

the  counsel  she  needed,  receiving  it  in  generous  measure. 
It  was  a  fortunate  choice,  the  most  fortunate  possible,  if 
she  wished  to  combine  in  her  art  the  detached  observa- 
tion characteristic  in  general  of  the  Impressionist  school 
with  a  passionate  pursuit  of  all  the  subtlety,  eloquence 
and  precision  possible  to  pure  line.  The  fruit  of  his  influ- 
ence is  to  be  found  in  the  technical  excellence  of  her 
representations  of  life,  the  firmness  and  candor  of  her 
drawing,  her  competent  management  of  planes  and  sur- 
faces, and  the  audacity  with  which  she  attacks  diflBcult 
problems  of  color  and  tone.  The  extreme  gravity  of  her 
method  is  the  natural  result  of  working  under  a  master 
whose  intensity  and  austerity  in  the  pursuit  of  artistic 
truth  are  perhaps  unequaled  in  the  history  of  modern 
art. 

Her  choice  of  subject  is  not,  however,  the  inspiration 
of  any  mind  other  than  her  own.  She  has  taken  for  the 
special  field  in  which  to  exercise  her  vigorous  talent  that 
provided  by  the  various  phases  of  the  maternal  relation. 
Her  wholesome  young  mothers  with  their  animated  chil- 
dren, comely  and  strong,  unite  the  charm  of  great  expres- 
siveness with  that  of  profoundly  scientific  execution.  The 
attentive  student  of  art  is  well  aware  how  easily  the  former 
quality  unsupported  by  the  latter  may  degenerate  into 
the  cloying  exhibition  of  sentiment,  and  is  equally  aware 
of  the   sterility  of  the   latter   practised   for  itself  alone. 


THE  ART  OF  MARY  CASSATT  rj 

With  expressiveness  for  her  goal  and  the  means  of  render- 
ing technical  problems  for  her  preoccupation,  Miss  Cassatt 
has  arrived  at  hard-earned  triumphs  of  accompHshment. 
One  has  only  to  turn  from  one  of  her  recently  exhibited 
pictures  to  another  painted  ten  or  twelve  years  ago  to 
appreciate  the  length  of  the  way  she  has  come.  The 
earlier  painting,  an  oil  color,  is  of  a  woman  in  a  striped 
purple,  white,  and  green  gown,  holding  a  half-naked 
child,  who  is  engaged  in  bathing  its  own  feet,  with  the 
absorbed  expression  on  its  face  common  to  children 
occupied  with  such  responsible  tasks.  The  bricky  flesh 
tints  of  the  faces  and  hands,  and  the  greenish  half-tones 
of  the  square  little  body  are  too  highly  emphasized,  but 
a  keen  perception  of  facts  of  surface  and  construction  is 
obvious  in  the  well-defined  planes  of  the  child's  anatomy, 
in  the  foreshortened,  thin  little  arm  pressing  firmly  on 
the  woman's  knee  and  in  the  stout  little  legs,  hard  and 
round  and  simply  modeled.  There  is  plenty  of  truth  in 
the  picture,  but  in  spite  of  an  almost  effective  effort  toward 
harmony  of  color,  it  lacks  what  the  critics  call  "totality 
of  effect."  The  annotation  of  the  various  phenomena  is 
too  explicit,  the  values  are  not  finely  related,  and  there  is 
little  suggestion  of  atmosphere. 

In  the  later  picture  this  crudity  is  replaced  by  a  beauti- 
ful fluent  handling  and  the  mystery  of  tone.  The  sub- 
ject is  again  a  woman  and  child,  the  latter  just  out  of  its 


28  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

bath,  its  flesh  bright  and  glowing,  its  Hmbs  instinct  with 
life  and  ready  to  spring  with  uncontrollable  vivacity. 
The  modeling  of  the  figures  is  as  elusive  as  it  is  sure,  and 
in  the  warm,  golden  air  by  which  they  seem  to  be  en- 
veloped, the  well-understood  forms  lose  all  suggestion  of 
the  hardness  and  dryness  conspicuous  in  the  early  work. 
Another  recent  painting  of  a  kindred  subject,  Le  lever  de 
hehey  shows  the  same  synthesis  of  detail,  the  same  warmth 
and  richness  of  tone,  the  same  free  and  learned  use  of 
line.  Obviously,  Miss  Cassatt  has  come  into  the  full 
possession  of  her  art  and  is  no  longer  constrained  by  the 
struggle,  sharp  and  hard  as  it  must  have  been,  with  her 
exacting  method  —  a  method  that  has  not  at  any  time 
permitted  the  sacrifice  of  truth  to  charm.  Since  art  is 
both  truth  and  charm,  record  and  poetry,  there  is  a  great 
satisfaction  in  watching  the  flowering  of  a  positive  talent, 
after  the  inevitable  stages  of  literalism  are  passed,  into 
the  beauty  of  intelligent  generalization.  In  all  the  later 
work  there  is  the  important  element  of  ease,  a  certain 
graciousness  of  style,  that  enhances  to  a  very  great  degree 
the  beauty  of  the  serious,  dignified  canvases.  And  from 
the  beginning  these  have  shown  the  admirable  qualities 
of  serenity  and  poise.  There  is  no  superficiaHty  or  petti- 
ness about  these  homely  women  with  their  deep  chests 
and  calm  faces,  peacefully  occupying  themselves  with 
their  sound,  agreeable  children.     The  air  of  health,  of 


Child  Resting 
From  an  etching  by  Mary  Cassatt 


THE  ART  OF  MARY  CASSATT  29 

fresh  and  normal  vigor,  is  the  characteristic  of  the  chosen 
type,  and  lends  a  suggestion  of  the  Hellenic  spirit  to  the 
modern  physiognomies. 

If,  however,  in  her  technique  and  in  the  feeling  of 
quietness  she  conveys.  Miss  Cassatt  recalls  the  classic 
tradition,  she  is  intensely  modern  in  her  choice  of  natural, 
unhackneyed  gesture,  and  faces  in  which  individuality  is 
strongly  marked  and  from  which  conventional  beauty  is 
absent.  Occasionally,  as  in  the  picture  shown  at  Phila- 
delphia in  1904,  and  in  the  fine  painting  owned  by  Sir 
William  C.  Van  Home,  we  have  a  face  charming  in  itself 
and  modeled  in  a  way  to  bring  out  its  refinement,  but  in 
the  greater  number  of  instances  the  rather  heavy  and  im- 
perfect features  of  our  average  humanity  are  reproduced 
without  compromise,  with  even  a  certain  sense  of  triumph 
in  the  beautiful  statement  of  sufficiently  ugly  facts  and 
freedom  from  a  fixed  ideal. 

Nothing,  for  example,  could  be  less  in  the  line  of  aca- 
demic beauty  than  the  quiet  bonneted  woman  in  the 
opera-box  shown  at  the  Pennsylvania  Academy  in  1907. 
She  has  her  opera-glass  to  her  eyes  and  her  pleasant  re- 
fined profile  is  cut  sharply  against  the  light  balustrade  of 
the  balcony.  Other  figures  in  adjoining  boxes  are  mere 
patches  of  color  and  of  light  and  shade,  telling,  neverthe- 
less, as  personalities  so  acutely  are  the  individual  values 
perceived  and  discriminated.     The  color  is  personal  and 


30  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

interesting,  the  difficult  perspective  of  the  curving  line 
of  boxes  is  mastered  with  amazing  skill;  the  fidelity  of 
the  drawing  to  the  forms  and  aspects  of  things  seen  gives 
expression  to  even  the  inanimate  objects  recorded  —  and 
to  painters  who  have  tried  it  we  recommend  the  subtlety 
of  that  simply  modeled  cheek!  The  whole  produces  the 
impression  of  solid  reality  and  quick  life  and  we  get  from 
it  the  kind  of  pleasure  communicated  not  by  the  imitation 
but  by  the  evocation  of  living  truth.  We  note  things  that 
have  significance  for  us  for  the  first  time  —  the  fineness 
of  the  hair  under  the  dark  bonnet,  the  pressure  of  the 
body's  weight  on  the  arm  supported  by  the  railing,  the 
relaxation  of  the  arm  holding  the  fan,  and  very  clever 
painting  by  artists  of  less  passionate  sincerity  takes  on  a 
meretricious  look  in  contrast  with  this  closeness  of  inter- 
pretation. 

This,  perhaps,  is  the  chief  distinction  of  Miss  Cassatt's 
art  —  closeness  of  interpretation  united  to  the  Impres- 
sionist's care  for  the  transitory  aspect  of  things.  She 
follows  the  track  of  an  outline  as  sensitively  if  not  as 
obviously  as  Ingres,  and  she  exacts  from  line  as  much  as  it 
is  capable  of  giving  without  interference  with  the  expres- 
siveness of  the  whole  mass.  She  takes  account  of  details 
with  an  unerring  sense  for  their  appropriateness.  She 
selects  without  forcing  the  note  of  exclusion,  and  she  thus 
becomes  an  artist  of  sufficiently  general  appeal  to  be  un- 


THE  ART  OF  MARY  CASSATT  31 

derstood  at  once.  She  is  not  merely  intelligent,  but 
intelligible;  her  art  has  no  cryptic  side.  It  is  only  the 
initiated  frequenter  of  galleries  who  will  pause  to  reflect 
how  tremendously  it  costs  to  be  so  clear  and  plain. 

In  her  etchings  and  drawings  Miss  Cassatt  early  arrived 
at  freedom  of  handling.  The  more  responsive  medium 
gave  her  an  opportunity  to  produce  delightful  studies  of 
domestic  life  while  she  was  still  far  from  having  attained 
an  easy  control  of  pigment  and  brush.  Her  dry-points, 
pulled  under  her  own  direction  and  enriched  with  flat 
tints  of  color,  are  interesting  and  expressive,  rich  in  line 
and  large  and  full  in  modeling.  The  color  was  not, 
however,  wholly  an  improving  experiment.  Under  the 
friendly  influence  of  time  it  may  become  an  element  of 
beauty,  since  in  no  case  is  it  either  commonplace  or  crude, 
but  in  its  newness  it  lacks  something  of  both  delicacy  and 
depth.  The  later  etchings  without  color  are  more  nearly 
completely  satisfying.  The  three  charming  interpreta- 
tions of  children  recently  sent  over  to  this  country  are 
full  of  freshness  and  life,  and  are  admirable  examples 
of  the  brilliant  use  of  pure  line.  The  attitude  of  the  child 
in  the  etching  reproduced  here  is,  indeed,  quite  an  extraor- 
dinary feat  of  richness  of  expression  with  economy  of 
means.  The  heavy  little  head  sagging  against  the  tense 
arm,  the  small,  childish  neck  and  thin  shoulder  are  in- 
sisted upon  just  sufficiently  to  render  the  mood  of  light 


32  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

weariness,  and  the  little  face,  full  of  individuality,  is  ten- 
derly observed  and  modeled  with  feeling.  The  psy- 
chological bent  of  the  artist,  her  interest  in  the  portrayal 
of  mental  and  moral  qualities,  is  nowhere  more  clearly 
revealed  than  in  her  drawings  of  children.  She  has  never 
been  content  to  reproduce  merely  the  physical  plasticity 
and  delicacy  of  infancy,  but  has  shown  in  her  joyous 
babies  and  dreamy  little  girls  at  least  the  potentiality  of 
strong  wills  and  clear  minds.  Great  diversity  of  char- 
acter and  temperament  are  displayed  in  the  expressive 
curves  of  the  plump  young  faces,  and  the  eyes,  in  par- 
ticular, questioning,  exultant,  wondering,  reflective  or 
merry,  betray  a  penetrating  and  subtle  insight  into  the 
dawning  personality  under  observation. . 

One  of  her  earliest  works  recently  has  been  added  to 
the  Wilstach  collection  in  Philadelphia.  It  shows  a  man 
and  two  women  on  a  balcony.  The  straight  line  of  the 
balcony  railing  stretches  across  the  foreground  without 
any  modification  of  its  rigid  linear  eff^ect.  The  man*s 
figure  is  in  shadow,  barely  perceptible  as  to  detail,  yet 
indicated  without  uncertainty  of  drawing  or  vagueness 
of  any  kind,  a  solid  figure  the  "tactile  values"  of  which 
are  clearly  recognized.  One  of  the  women  is  bending 
over  the  railing  in  a  half-shadow  while  the  other  lifts  her 
face  toward  the  man  in  an  attitude  that  makes  exacting 
requirements  of  the  artist's  knowledge  of  foreshortening. 


From  the  Wilstach  Collection,  Philadelphia. 

On  the  Balcony 

From  a  painting  by  Mary  Cassatt 


THE  ART  OF  MARY  CASSATT  33 

The  whole  is  duskily  brilliant  in  color,  full  of  the  sense  of 
form,  simple,  dignified,  sturdy,  opulent.  It  shows  that 
Miss  Cassatt  held  at  the  beginning  of  her  career  as  now, 
valuable  ideals  of  competency  and  lucidity  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  life. 


Woman  with  a  Fan 
From  a  painting  by  Mary  Cassatt 


MAX  KLINGER 


M 


III 

Max  Klinger 

AX  KLINGER  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  and 
representative  figures  in  the  art  of  Germany  to- 
day. Essentially  German  in  manner  of  thought  and 
feeling,  he  has  brought  into  the  stiff  formality  of  early 
nineteenth  century  German  painting  and  sculpture  a 
plasticity  of  mind  and  an  elevation  of  purpose  and  idea 
that  suggest  (as  most  that  is  excellent  in  Germany  does 
suggest)  the  influence  of  Goethe.  In  his  restless  interroga- 
tion of  all  the  forms  of  representative  art,  his  work  in  the 
mass  shows  a  curious  mingling  of  fantasy,  imagination, 
brusque  realism,  antique  austerity,  and  modern  science. 
The  enhancing  of  the  sense  of  life  is,  however,  always  the 
first  thought  with  him,  and  Hes  at  the  root  of  his  method  of 
introducing  color  into  sculpture,  not  by  the  means  of  a 
deadening  pigment  but  by  the  use  of  marbles  of  deep  tints 
and  positive  hues,  and  of  translucent  stones.  As  an  artist, 
his  chief  distinction  is  this  unremitting  intention  to  convey 
in  one  way  or  another  the  sense  of  the  vitalizing  princi- 
ple in  animate  objects.     We  may  say  of  him  that  his 

37 


38  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

drawing  is  sometimes  poor,  that  his  imagination  may  be 
clumsy  and  infelicitous,  that  his  treatment  of  a  subject  is 
frequently  coarse  and  even  crude,  but  we  cannot  deny  that 
out  of  his  etchings  and  paintings,  and  out  of  his  great 
strange  sculptured  figures  looks  the  spirit  of  life,  more 
often  defiant  than  noble,  more  often  capricious  than 
beautiful,  but  not  to  be  mistaken,  and  the  rarest  phe- 
nomenon in  the  art  product  of  his  native  country.  He 
unites,  too,  a  profound  respect  for  the  art  of  antiquity 
with  a  stout  modern  sentiment,  a  union  that  gives  to  his 
better  work  both  dignity  and  force.  What  he  seems  to 
lack  is  the  one  impalpable,  delicate,  elusive  quality  that 
makes  for  our  enjoyment  of  so  many  imperfect  produc- 
tions, and  the  lack  of  which  does  so  much  to  blind  us  to 
excellence  in  other  directions  —  the  quahty  of  charm, 
which  in  the  main  depends  upon  the  possession  by  the 
artist  of  taste. 

Max  Klinger  was  born  in  Leipzig  on  the  eighteenth  of 
February,  1857.  His  father  was  a  man  of  artistic  predi- 
lections, and  in  easy  circumstances,  so  that  the  choice  of 
a  bread-winning  profession  for  the  son  was  not  of  first 
importance.  As  Klinger's  talent  showed  itself  at  a  very 
early  age,  it  was  promptly  decided  that  he  should  be  an 
artist.  He  left  school  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  and  went  to 
Karlsruhe,  where  Gussow  was  beginning  to  gather  about 
him  a  large  number  of  pupils.     In  1875  he  followed  Gus- 


Beethoven 
From  a  statue  in  colored  marble  by  Max  Klinger 


MAX  KLINGER  39 

sow  to  Berlin,  where  he  came  also  under  the  influence  of 
Menzel.  Gussow's  teaching  was  all  in  the  line  of  in- 
dividualism and  naturalism.  He  led  his  pupils  straight 
to  nature  for  their  model,  and  encouraged  them  to  paint 
only  what  they  themselves  saw  and  felt.  For  this  ground- 
ing in  the  representation  of  plain  facts  Klinger  has  been 
grateful  in  his  maturer  years,  and  looks  back  to  his  first 
master  with  admiration  and  respect  as  having  early  armed 
him  against  his  tendency  toward  fantasy  and  idealism. 
His  early  style  in  the  innumerable  drawings  of  his  youth 
is  thin  and  weak,  without  a  sign  of  the  bold  originality 
characterizing  his  recent  work,  and  he  obviously  needed 
air  the  support  he  could  get  from  frank  and  sustained 
observation  of  nature.  His  first  oil-painting,  exhibited  in 
Berlin  in  1878,  showed  the  result  of  Gussow's  influence 
in  its  solidity  and  practical  directness  of  appeal,  but  a 
number  of  etchings,  executed  that  year  and  the  next  — 
forerunners  of  the  important  later  series  —  indicate  the 
natural  bent  of  the  young  artist's  mind  toward  symbolic 
forms  and  unhackneyed  subjects. 

About  the  art  of  drawing  as  distinguished  from  that  of 
painting  he  has  his  own  opinions,  expressed  with  em- 
phasis in  an  essay  called  Malerei  und  Zeichnung.  Draw- 
ing, etching,  lithography  and  wood-engraving  he  considers 
preeminently  adapted  to  convey  purely  imaginative 
thoughts  such  as  would  lose  a  part  of  their  evanescent 


40  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

suggestiveness  by  translation  into  the  more  definite 
medium  of  oil-color,  and  he  holds  Griff elkunsty  or  the  art 
of  the  point  in  as  high  estimation  as  any  other  art  for  the 
interpretation  of  ideas  appropriate  to  it,  an  opinion  not 
now  as  unusual  as  when  he  first  announced  it  to  his  coun- 
trymen. For  about  five  years  after  the  close  of  his  stu- 
dent period,  he  occupied  himself  chiefly  with  etchings, 
turning  out  between  1879  ^^^  ^^^3  ^^  fewer  than  nine  of 
the  elaborate  "cycles"  which  are  so  expressive  of  his 
method  of  thought,  and  of  the  best  qualities  of  his  work- 
manship. In  these  cycles  he  delights  in  following  a 
development  not  unlike  that  of  a  musical  theme,  beginning 
with  a  prelude  and  carrying  the  idea  through  manifold 
variations  to  its  final  expression.  His  curious  history 
of  the  finding  of  a  glove  which  passes  through  difi^er- 
ent  symbolic  forms  of  individuality  in  the  dreams  of  a 
lover,  is  a  fair  example  of  his  eccentric  and  somewhat 
lumbering  humor  in  the  use  of  a  symbol  in  his  earlier  years. 
His  etchings  for  Ovid's  Metamorphoses  show  the  same 
violent  grasp  of  the  lighter  side  of  his  subject,  but  in  his 
landscape  etchings  of  1881  we  have  ample  opportunity 
to  see  what  he  could  do  with  a  conventionally  charming 
subject  treated  with  conventional  sentiment  and  without 
symbolic  intention.  The  moonlight  scene  which  he  calls 
Mondnachty  has  all  the  subtle  exquisite  feeling  for  har- 
mony and  tone  to  be  gained  from  a  Whistler  nocturne. 


MAX  KLINGER  41 

The  dim  light  on  the  buildings,  the  soft  sweep  of  the 
clouds  across  the  dark  sky,  the  impalpable  rendering,  the 
grave  and  deep  beauty  of  the  scene  combine  to  express 
the  essence  of  night  and  its  mystery.  The  oil-painting 
Abend,  of  1882,  also  bears  eloquent  testimony  to  Klinger's 
power  to  evoke  purely  pictorial  images  of  great  love- 
liness. 

In  1882,  after  about  a  year  of  study  in  Munich,  he 
painted  the  important  frescoes  for  the  Steglitz  Villa,  in 
which  the  influence  of  Boecklin  played  freely.  It  was 
in  Paris,  however,  where  he  studied  between  1883  and 
1885,  that  Klinger  received  his  strongest  and  most  definite 
impulse  toward  painting.  His  'Judgment  of  Paris  re- 
vealed the  fact  that  the  young  painter  had  come  into 
possession  of  himself,  and  could  be  depended  upon  for 
qualities  demanding  constraint  and  a  measure  of  severity. 
In  choosing  a  legend  of  antiquity  for  the  subject  of  his 
picture,  he  may  have  felt  a  psychological  obligation  to 
obey  the  greater  influences  of  the  antique  tradition.  At 
all  events  he  rather  suddenly  developed  a  style  of  great 
maturity  and  firmness.  From  Paris  he  went  back  to 
Berlin,  but  in  1889  he  started  for  Rome,  where  he  spent 
four  profitable  years.  The  fruit  of  this  Roman  period 
has  continued  to  ripen  up  to  the  present  time,  although 
since  1893  KHnger  has  made  his  home  in  Leipzig,  his 
wanderjahre   apparently   over   and   done   with.     He   not 


42  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

only  painted  in  Rome  a  Pteta,  a  Crucifixion^  and  a  num- 
ber of  pictures  in  which  problems  of  open-air  painting 
are  attacked,  but  he  conceived  there  the  powerful  series 
of  etchings  on  the  subject  of  death,  and  there  he  made 
his  first  attempts  in  colored  sculpture.  From  his  earliest 
years,  the  image  of  death  had  often  solicited  him,  and 
some  of  his  interpretations  are  filled  with  dignity  and 
pathos.  In  the  slender,  rigid  figure  on  a  white  draped 
bed,  from  the  etching  cycle  entitled  Fine  Liehe^  there  is 
the  suggestion  of  a  classic  tomb,  severe  and  impressive 
in  outline,  while  nothing  could  be  more  poignant  than  the 
emotional  appeal  of  the  Mutter  und  Kind  in  the  second 
death  series.  To  turn  from  these  to  the  two  religious 
paintings  executed  in  Rome,  is  to  realize  that  eccentric 
as  Klinger  often  is,  both  in  choice  of  subject  and  treatment, 
his  attitude  toward  the  mysteries  and  problems  of  man's 
existence  is  that  of  a  serious  thinker  with  a  strong  artistic 
talent,  but  a  still  stronger  intelligence.  It  is  not,  how- 
ever, until  we  reach  the  period  which  he  devotes  to  sculp- 
ture, that  we  find  in  his  art  the  quality  of  nobility,  a 
certain  breadth,  which  in  spite  of  innovations  in  execu- 
tion and  almost  trivial  symbolic  detail,  impresses  upon 
his  conceptions  the  classic  mark. 

He  began  his  studies  for  his  great  polychromatic  statue 
of  Beethoven  as  early  as  1886,  fifteen  years  before  its  com- 
pletion.    In  1892  it  was  reported  in  Rome  that  he  had 


MAX  KLINGER  43 

turned  to  sculpture  as  a  new  field  in  which  to  prove  him- 
self a  master,  and  his  first  exhibited  figure  placed  him 
above  the  rank  of  the  amateur.  He  threw  himself  into 
his  new  work  with  his  usual  energy,  making  himself 
familiar  with  the  technicalities  of  marble  cutting  in  order 
to  follow  the  execution  with  intelligence  at  every  stage. 
He  sought  for  his  material  with  unwearying  zest,  taking 
long  journeys  into  Italy,  Greece  and  the  Pyrenees  to  pro- 
cure marble  with  the  soft,  worn,  rich  quality  produced 
by  exposure  to  the  weather;  with  this  he  combined  onyx 
and  brilliant  stones,  bronze,  ivory  and  gold,  always  with 
the  intention  of  creating  an  impression  of  life  in  addition 
to  producing  a  decorative  result.  His  strong  decorative 
instinct  comes  to  his  aid,  however,  in  avoiding  the  inco- 
herence that  would  seem  inevitable  from  the  mixture  of 
so  many  and  such  diverse  materials,  and  the  equally  strong 
intellectual  motive  always  obvious  in  his  work  also  tends 
to  hold  it  together  in  a  more  or  less  dignified  unity.  The 
Cassandroy  his  second  colored  statue,  finished  in  Leip- 
zig in  1895,  ^^^  ^^^  ^"  possession  of  the  Leipzig  Museum, 
is  especially  free  from  eccentricity  and  caprice.  The 
beautiful  Greek  head,  with  its  deep-set  eyes  and  delicate 
mouth,  is  expressive  of  intense  but  normal  feeling.  The 
flesh  is  represented  by  warm-toned  marble,  the  hair  is 
brownish-red,  the  garment  is  of  alabaster,  yellowish-red 
with  violet  tones,  and  the  figure  stands  on  a  pedestal  of 


44  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

Pyranean  marble.  In  color  eflPect,  however,  the  Beethoven 
is  the  most  striking.  In  Les  Mditres  Contemporains,  M. 
Paul  Mongre  thus  describes  it: 

"The  pedestal,  half  rock,  half  cloud,  which  supports 
the  throne  of  the  Olympian  master,  is  of  Pyranean  marble 
of  a  dark  violet-brown;  the  eagle  is  of  black  marble, 
veined  with  white,  its  eyes  are  of  amber.  The  nude  bust 
of  Beethoven  is  of  white  Syrian  marble,  with  light  yellow- 
ish reflections,  the  drapery,  hanging  in  supple  folds,  is  of 
Tyrolean  onyx  with  yellow-brown  streaks  in  it.  The 
throne  of  bronze  is  of  a  dull  brown  tone,  except  in  the 
curved  arms,  which  are  brilliantly  gilded.  Five  angel 
heads  in  ivory  are  placed  like  a  crown  on  the  inside  of  the 
back  of  the  throne;  their  wings  are  studded  with  multi- 
colored gems  and  with  antique  fluorspar;  the  back  of 
the  throne  is  laid  with  blue  Hungarian  opals."  All  these 
diff'erent  elements,  the  French  critic  maintains,  are  held 
together  in  reciprocal  cohesion,  and  are  kept  subordinated 
to  the  bold  conception  of  Beethoven  as  the  Jupiter  of 
music  —  "the  godlike  power  accumulated  and  concen- 
trated, on  the  point  of  breaking  forth  in  Hghtnings;  the 
eagle  in  waiting,  ready  to  take  flight,  as  the  visible  thought 
of  Jupiter,  before  whom  will  spring  up  a  whole  world,  or 
the  musical  image  of  a  world :  that  is  what  is  manifested 
by  this  close  alliance  of  idea  and  form.'* 

This  monument  to  Beethoven  is  a  performance  designed 


Cassandra 
From  a  statue  in  colored  marble  by  Max  Klinger 


MAX  KLINGER  45 

to  express  not  merely  the  artistic  interest  of  the  subject  for 
Klinger,  but  the  abounding  enthusisam  of  the  latter  for 
the  great  musician's  genius.  Immediately  after  leaving 
Rome,  Klinger  also  brought  to  completion  a  series  of 
etchings  called  Brahms-phantasiey  and  intended  to  illus- 
trate the  emotions  aroused  by  the  compositions  of  Brahms. 
In  1901  he  made  a  portrait  bust  of  Liszt,  and  his  draw- 
ings for  the  Metamorphoses  were  dedicated  to  Schumann. 
In  the  autumn  of  1906  his  Brahms  memorial  was  placed 
in  the  new  Music  Hall  in  Hamburg.  This  memorial 
monument  has  the  form  of  a  powerful  Hermes  with  the 
head  of  Brahms.  The  Muse  of  tone  is  apparently  whis- 
pering secrets  of  art  into  the  ears  of  the  master.  His 
debt,  therefore,  to  the  masters  of  music  may  be  considered 
as  fully  and  promptly  paid,  and  the  impression  of  hero- 
worship  conveyed  by  these  ardent  tributes  is  a  reminder 
that  the  artist  is  young  in  temperament,  Teutonic  in  origin, 
and  untouched  by  the  modern  spirit  of  indifference  to 
persons.  Unlike  many  German  artists  of  the  present 
day,  he  did  not  find  in  Paris  the  atmosphere  that  suited  him. 
In  spite  of  his  years  there  and  in  Rome,  he  has  remained 
undisturbed  by  any  anti-German  influence.  His  com- 
patriots speak  with  pride  of  the  intensely  national  character 
of  his  mind,  and  have  early  recognized  his  importance, 
as  perhaps  could  hardly  have  failed  to  be  the  case  with 
powers  so  far   from  humble,  and  a  method  so  far  from 


46  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

patient.  France  also  has  paid  him  more  than  one  tribute 
of  appreciation,  and  the  general  feeling  toward  him  seems 
now  to  be  that  expressed  by  one  of  his  German  admirers 
in  America :  "  Why  criticize  him  ?  He  is  so  overwhelming, 
so  overpowering  intellectually  that  the  best  we  can  do  is 
to  try  to  understand  him." 


ALFRED  STEVENS 


IV 

Alfred  Stevens 

AN  exhibition  of  the  paintings  of  Alfred  Stevens  was 
held  in  April  and  May,  1907,  at  the  city  of  Brussels, 
and  later  in  May  and  in  June  at  the  city  of  Antwerp. 
The  collection  comprised  examples  from  the  museums 
at  Brussels,  Antwerp,  Paris  and  Marseilles,  and  from 
the  galleries  of  many  private  owners.  It  was  represent- 
ative in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word,  showing  the  lit- 
eral tendencies  of  the  artist's  youth  in  such  pictures  as 
Les  Chasseurs  de  Vincennes  (1855)  tightly  painted,  con- 
scientiously modeled,  with  only  the  deep,  resonant  red 
of  a  woman's  cape  to  indicate  the  magnificent  color-sense 
soon  to  be  revealed;  or  Le  Convalescent,  in  which  the 
two  sympathetic  women  hovering  over  the  languid  young 
man  in  a  Paris  drawing-room  are  photographically  true 
to  the  life  of  the  time,  without,  however,  conveying  its 
spiritual  or  intellectual  expression;  showing  also  the 
rich  and  grave  middle  period  in  which  beauty  of  face 
and  form  and  the  charm  of  elegant  accessories  are  ren- 
dered  with   singular  intensity   and   perfect   sincerity;  as 

49 


50  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

in  Les  Visiteusesy  Desesperee^  etc.;  and,  finally,  showing 
the  psychological  synthesis  of  the  later  years,  which 
reveals  itself  in  such  works  as  Un  Sphinx  Parisien, 
baffling  in  its  fixed  introspective  gaze,  and  executed  with 
an  impeccable  technique. 

Many  of  the  early  pictures  have  a  joyousness  of  frank 
workmanship,  a  directness  of  attack  and  a  simplicity  of 
arrangement  that  appeal  to  the  world  at  large  more 
freely  than  the  subtler  blonde  harmonies  of  the  later 
years.  The  Profil  de  Femme  (1855)  in  which  M.  Lam- 
botte  discerns  the  influence  of  Rembrandt,  is  more  sug- 
gestive to  the  present  writer  of  familiarity  with  Courbet's 
bold,  heavy  impasto  and  sharp  transitions  from  light 
to  shadow.  The  Reverie  of  the  preceding  year  has 
also  its  suggestions  of  Courbet,  in  spite  of  the  delicately 
painted  flowers  in  the  Japanese  vase;  but  in  the  pic- 
tures of  the  next  few  years,  the  robust  freshness  of  the 
painter's  Flemish  vision  finds  expression  in  color-schemes 
that  resemble  nothing  so  much  as  the  gardens  of  Bel- 
gium in  springtime,  filled  with  hardy  blossoms  and 
tended  by  skilful  hands;  La  Consolation  of  1857,  for 
example,  in  which  the  two  black-robed  women  form  the 
heavy  note  of  dead  color  against  which  are  relieved  the 
pink  and  white  of  their  companion's  gown,  the  pale 
yellow  of  the  wall,  the  blue  of  the  floor  and  the  low, 
softly   brilliant   tones   of  the   beautiful   tapestry   curtain. 


ALFRED  STEVENS  5 1 

Another  painting  of  about  the  same  time  has  almost  the 
charm  of  Fantin-Latour's  early  renderings  of  serious 
women  bending  over  their  books  or  their  sewing.  In 
La  Liseuse  the  girl's  face  is  absorbed  and  thoughtful, 
the  color  harmony  is  quiet,  the  white  dress,  the  dull  red 
of  the  chair,  the  blue  and  yellow  and  green  wools  on  the 
table,  forming  a  pattern  of  closely  related  tones  as  vari- 
ous in  its  unity  as  the  motley  border  of  an  old-fashioned 
dooryard.  In  other  examples  we  have  reminiscences  of 
that  time  of  excitement  and  esthetic  riot  when  the  silks 
and  porcelains  and  enamels  of  the  Far  East  came  into 
the  Paris  of  artists  and  artisans  and  formed  at  once  a 
part  of  the  baggage  of  the  Parisian  atelier.  Ulnde  a 
Paris  is  a  particularly  delightful  reflection  of  this  period 
of  "Chinoiseries."  It  depicts  a  young  woman  in  a  black 
gown  of  the  type  that  Millais  loved,  leaning  forward 
with  both  hands  on  a  table  covered  with  an  Indian  dra- 
pery. On  the  table  stands  the  miniature  figure  of  an 
elephant.  The  background  is  of  the  strong  green  so 
often  used  by  Manet  and  the  varied  pattern  of  the  table 
cover  gives  opportunity  for  assembling  a  number  of  rich 
and  vivid  yet  quiet  hues  in  an  intricate  and  interesting 
color  composition. 

La  Parisienne  Japonaise  is  a  subject  of  the  kind  that 
enlisted  Whistler's  interest  during  the  sixties  —  a  hand- 
some girl  in  a  blue  silk  kimono  embroidered  with  white 


52  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

and  yellow  flowers,  and  a  green  sash,  looks  into  a  mirror 
that  reflects  a  yellow  background  and  a  vase  of  flowers. 
The  colors  are  said  to  have  faded  and  changed,  to  the 
complete  demoralization  of  the  color-scheme,  but  it  is 
still  a  picture  of  winning  charm,  less  reserved  and  dig- 
nifled  than  Whistler's  Lange  Leizen  of  1864,  but  with 
passages  of  subtle  color  and  a  just  relation  of  values  that 
have  survived  the  encroachments  of  time. 

From  a  very  early  period  Stevens  adopted  the  camel's- 
hair  shawl  with  its  multi-colored  border  as  the  model 
for  his  palette  and  the  chief  decoration  of  his  picture. 
It  is  easier,  says  one  of  his  French  critics,  to  enumerate 
the  paintings  in  which  such  a  shawl  does  not  appear  than 
those  in  which  it  does.  It  slips  from  the  shoulders  of  the 
Desesperee  and  forms  a  wonderful  contrast  to  the  smooth 
fair  neck  and  arm  relieved  against  it;  it  is  the  magnificent 
background  of  the  voluminous  gauzy  robe  in  Une  Doulou- 
reuse  Certitude;  it  falls  over  the  chair  in  which  the  young 
mother  sits  nursing  her  baby  in  Tous  les  Bonheurs;  it 
hangs  in  the  corners  of  studios,  it  is  gracefully  worn  by 
fashionable  visitors  in  fashionable  drawing-rooms;  its 
foundation  color  is  cream  or  red  or  a  deep  and  tender 
yellow  as  soft  as  that  of  a  tea-rose;  it  determines  the  har- 
mony of  the  colored  silks  and  bric-a-brac  which  are  in  its 
vicinity,  it  rules  its  surroundings  with  a  truly  oriental 
splendor,  and  it  gives  to  the  work  in  which  it  plays  so 


L'Atelier 

From  a  fainting  by  Alfred  Stevens 


ALFRED  STEVENS  53 

prominent  a  part  an  individuality  supplementary  to  the 
artist's  own.  It  is  as  important  as  the  rugs  in  the  pic- 
tures of  Vermeer  of  Delft  or  Gerard  Terborch. 

The  silks  and  muslins  of  gowns  and  scarves  are  also 
important  accessories  in  these  pictures  which  have  a 
modernity  not  unlike  that  of  the  pictures  of  Velasquez, 
in  which  the  ugliness  of  contemporary  fashions  turns  to 
beauty  under  the  learned  rendering  of  textures  and  sur- 
faces. Bibelots  and  furnishings,  wall-hangings,  pic- 
tures, rugs,  polished  floors,  glass  and  silver  and  china 
and  jewels  are  all  likewise  pressed  into  the  service  of  an 
art  that  used  what  lay  nearest  to  it,  not  for  the  purposes 
of  realism  but  for  the  enchantment  of  the  vision.  M. 
Lambotte  has  pointed  out  that  Stevens  introduced  mir- 
rors, crystals  and  porcelains  into  his  canvasses  with  the 
same  intention  as  that  of  the  landscape-painter  who 
makes  choice  of  a  subject  with  a  river,  lake  or  pond, 
knowing  that  clear  reflections  and  smooth  surface  aid 
in  giving  the  efi^ect  of  distance  and  intervening  atmos- 
phere. The  same  writer  has  told  us  that  so  far  from 
reproducing  the  ordinary  costumes  of  his  period  Stevens 
took  pains  to  seek  exclusive  and  elegant  examples,  chefs 
J'ceuvres  of  the  dressmaker's  art,  and  that  such  were 
put  at  his  service  by  the  great  ladies  of  the  second  em- 
pire. The  beautiful  muslin  over-dress  of  the  Dame  en 
Rose  is  perhaps  the  one  that  most  taxed  his  flexible  brush. 


54  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

It  is  diaphanous  in  texture,  elaborately  cut  and  trimmed 
with  delicate  laces  and  embroideries,  and  the  rose  of 
the  under-robe,  the  snowy  white  of  the  muslin,  the  sil- 
ver ornaments  and  the  pale  blonde  hair  of  the  wearer 
make  the  lightest  and  daintiest  of  harmonies  accentuated 
by  the  black  of  the  lacquer  cabinet  with  its  brilliant  poly- 
chromatic insets. 

Unlike  Whistler,  Stevens  never  abandoned  the  rich 
and  complicated  color  arrangements  of  his  youth  for  an 
austere  and  restricted  palette.  He  nevertheless  was  at 
his  best  when  his  picture  was  dominated  by  a  single 
color,  as  in  the  wonderful  Fedora  of  1882  or  La  Tric- 
oteuse.  In  the  former  the  warmly  tinted  hair  and  deep 
yellow  fan  are  the  vibrant  notes,  the  creamy  dress,  the 
white  flowers,  the  silver  bracelet,  and  the  white  butter- 
fly making  an  ensemble  like  a  golden  wheatfield  swept 
by  pale  lights.  The  piquant  note  of  contrast  is  given 
by  the  blue  insolent  eyes  and  the  hardly  deeper  blue 
blossoms  of  the  love-in-a-mist  held  in  the  languid  hands. 

In  La  Tricoteuse  the  composition  of  colors  is  much  the 
same  —  a  creamy  white  dress  with  gray  shadows,  red- 
dish yellow  hair,  and  a  bit  of  blue  knitting  with  the  ad- 
dition of  a  sharp  line  of  red  made  by  the  signature.  There 
is  no  austerity  in  these  vaporous  glowing  arrangements 
of  a  single  color.  They  are  as  near  to  the  portraiture 
of  full  sunlight  as  pigment  has  been  able  to  approach 


ALFRED  STEVENS  55 

and  if  it  can  be  said  that  Whistler  has  "painted  the  soul 
of  color/'  it  certainly  can  be  said  that  Stevens  here  has 
painted  its  embodied  life.  For  the  most  part  we  have, 
however,  to  think  of  Alfred  Stevens  as  a  portraitist  of 
the  ponderable  world;  a  Flemish  lover  of  brilliant  ap- 
pearances, a  scrupulous  translator  of  the  language  of 
visible  things  into  the  idiom  of  art.  In  the  picture  en- 
titled UAtelieVy  which  we  reproduce,  is  a  more  or  less 
significant  instance  of  his  artistic  veracity.  On  the 
crowded  wall,  forming  the  background  against  which 
is  seen  the  model's  charming  profile,  is  a  picture  which 
obviously  is  a  copy  of  the  painting  of  La  Fuite  en  Egypte 
by  Breughel.  Two  versions  of  the  same  subject,  one, 
the  original  by  Breughel  the  elder,  the  other,  a  copy  by 
his  son,  now  hang  in  the  Brussels  Museum,  alike  in  com- 
position but  differing  in  tone,  the  son's  copy  having  appar- 
ently been  left  in  an  unfinished  condition  with  the  brown 
underpainting  visible  throughout.  That  this,  and  not 
the  elder  Breughel's,  is  the  original  of  the  picture  in 
Steven's  U Atelier  is  clear  at  the  first  glance,  the  warm 
tonality  having  been  accurately  reproduced  and  even 
the  drawing  of  the  tree  branches,  which  differs  much  in 
the  two  museum  pictures  having  conformed  precisely  to 
that  in  the  copy  by  the  younger  Breughel.  It  is  by  this 
accuracy  of  touch,  this  respect  for  difl^erences  of  texture 
and  material,  this  recognition  of  the  part  played  in  the 


56  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

ensemble  by  insignificant  detail,  this  artistic  conscience, 
in  a  word,  that  Stevens  demonstrates  his  descent  from 
the  great  line  of  Flemish  painters  and  makes  good  their 
tradition  in  modern  life.  Many  of  his  sayings  are  ex- 
pressive of  his  personal  attitude  toward  art.  For  ex- 
ample: 

"It  is  first  of  all  necessary  to  be  a  painter.  No  one 
is  wholly  an  artist  who  is  not  a  perfect  workman." 

"  When  your  right  hand  becomes  too  facile  —  more 
facile  than  the  thought  that  guides  it,  use  the  left  hand." 

*'Do  not  put  into  a  picture  too  many  things  which 
attract  attention.  When  every  one  speaks  at  once  no 
one  is  heard." 

Concerning  technique,  he  says  to  his  pupils:  "Paint 
quantities  of  flowers.  It  is  excellent  practice.  Use  the 
palette  knife  to  unite  and  smooth  the  color,  efface  with 
the  knife  the  traces  of  the  brush.  When  one  paints  with 
a  brush  the  touches  seen  through  a  magnifying  glass  are 
streaked  with  light  and  shade  because  of  the  hairs  of 
the  brush.  The  use  of  the  palette  knife  renders  these 
strokes  as  smooth  as  marble,  the  shadows  have  dis- 
appeared. The  material  brought  together  renders  the 
tone  more  beautiful.     Marble  has  never  an  ugly  tone." 

"One  may  use  impasto,  but  not  everywhere.  Your 
brush  should  be  handled  with  reference  to  the  character 
of  what   you    are    copying  ...  do   not   forget   that   an 


ALFRED    STEVENS  57 

apple  is  smooth.  I  should  like  to  see  you  model  a  bil- 
liard ball.     Train  yourself  to  have  a  true  eye." 

These  are  precepts  that  might  be  given  by  any  good 
painter,  but  few  of  the  moderns  could  more  justly  claim 
to  have  practiced  all  that  they  preached. 

As  a  creative  artist  Stevens  had  his  limitations.  His 
lineal  arrangements  are  seldom  entirely  fortunate  and 
his  compositions,  despite  the  skill  with  which  the  given 
space  is  filled,  lack  except  in  rare  instances  the  serenity 
of  less  crowded  canvasses.  He  invariably  strove  to  gain 
atmosphere  by  his  choice  and  treatment  of  accessories 
but  he  rarely  used  the  delicate  device  of  elimination. 
Nevertheless  he  was  a  great  painter  and  a  great  Belgian, 
untrammeled  by  foreign  influences.  He  not  only  drank 
from  his  own  glass  but  he  drank  from  it  the  rich  old  wines 
of  his  native  country. 


A  SKETCH  IN  OUTLINE  OF  JACQUES 
CALLOT 


A  Sketch  in  Outline  of  Jacques  Callot 

IN  the  Print  Room  of  the  New  York  Public  Library 
are  a  large  number  of  etchings  by  Jacques  Callot, 
which  are  a  mine  of  wealth  to  the  painter-etcher  of  to- 
day, curious  of  the  methods  of  his  predecessors.  Looking 
at  the  portrait  of  Callot  in  which  he  appears  at  the  height 
of  his  brief  career  with  well  formed,  gracious  features, 
ardent  eyes,  a  bearing  marked  by  serenity  and  distinction, 
an  expression  both  grave  and  genial,  the  observer  inevit- 
ably must  ask :  "  Is  this  the  creator  of  that  grotesque  man- 
ner of  drawing  which  for  nearly  three  centuries  has  borne 
his  name,  the  artist  of  the  Balliy  the  Gobbiy  the  Beggars. 
In  this  dignified,  imaginative  countenance  we  have  no 
hint  of  Callot's  tremendous  curiosity  regarding  the  most 
fantastic  side  of  the  fantastic  times  in  which  he  lived. 
We  see  him  in  the  role  least  emphasized  by  his  admirers, 
although  that  to  which  the  greater  number  of  his  working 
years  were  dedicated :  the  role,  that  is,  of  moralist,  philoso- 
pher and  historian,  one  deeply  impressed  by  the  suffer- 
ings and  cruelties  of  which  he  became  a  sorrowful  critic. 


6i 


62  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

There  surely  never  was  an  artist  whose  life  and  en- 
vironment were  more  faithfully  illustrated  by  his  art. 
To  know  one  is  to  know  the  other,  at  least  as  they  ap- 
pear from  the  outside,  for  with  Callot,  as  with  the  less 
veracious  and  ingenuous  Watteau,  it  is  the  external 
aspect  of  things  that  we  get  and  from  which  we  must 
form  our  inferences.  Only  in  his  selection  of  his  sub- 
jects do  we  find  the  preoccupation  of  his  mind;  in  his 
rendering  he  is  detached  and  impersonal,  helping  us  out 
at  times  in  our  knowledge  of  his  mental  attitude  with 
such  quaint  rhymes  as  those  accompanying  Les  Grandes 
Miseres  de  la  Guerre^  but  chiefly  confining  his  hand  to  the 
representation  of  forms,  relations  and  distances,  with  as 
little  concern  as  possible  for  the  expression  of  his  own 
temperament,  or  for  psychological  portraiture  of  any  sort. 

In  the  little  history,  more  or  less  authenticated,  of  his 
eventful  youth  is  the  key  to  his  charm  as  an  artist,  a 
charm  the  essence  of  which  is  freedom,  an  easy,  informal 
way  of  looking  at  the  visible  world,  a  light  abandon  in 
the  method  of  reproducing  it,  an  independence  of  the 
tool  or  medium,  resulting  in  art  which,  despite  its  minute- 
ness of  detail,  seems  to  "happen"  as  Whistler  has  said 
all  true  art  must.  The  beginning  was  distinctly  pic- 
turesque, befitting  a  nature  to  which  the  world  at  first 
unfolded  itself  as  a  great  Gothic  picturebook  filled  with 
strange,  eccentric  and  misshapen  figures. 


A  SKETCH  IN  OUTLINE  OF  JACQUES  CALLOT       63 

One  spring  day  in  1604,  a  band  of  Bohemians,  such 
as  are  described  in  Gautier's  Le  Capitaine  Fracasse^ 
might  have  been  seen  journeying  through  the  smiHng 
country  of  Lorraine  on  their  way  to  Florence  to  be  pres- 
ent there  at  the  great  Fair  of  the  Madonna.  No  gipsy 
caravan  of  to-day  would  so  much  as  suggest  that  bizarre 
and  irresponsible  company  of  men,  women,  and  children, 
clad  in  motley  rags,  some  in  carts,  some  trudging  on  foot, 
some  mounted  on  asses  or  horses  rivaling  Rosinante  in 
bony  ugliness,  the  men  armed  with  lance,  cutlass  and 
rifle,  a  cask  of  wine  strapped  to  the  back  of  one,  a  lamb 
in  the  arms  of  another.  A  couple  of  the  swarming  chil- 
dren were  decked  out  with  cooking  utensils,  an  iron  pot 
for  a  hat,  a  turnspit  for  a  cane,  a  gridiron  hanging  in  front 
apron  wise.  Chickens,  ducks,  and  other  barnyard  plun- 
der testified  to  the  marauding  course  of  the  troop  whose 
advent  at  an  inn  was  the  signal  for  terrified  flight  on  the 
part  of  the  inmates.  The  camp  by  night,  if  no  shelter 
were  at  hand,  was  in  the  forest,  where  the  travelers  tied 
their  awnings  to  the  branches  of  trees,  built  their  fires, 
dressed  their  stolen  meats,  and  lived  so  far  as  they  could 
accomplish  it  on  the  fat  of  the  land  —  for  the  most  part 
of  their  way  a  rich  and  lovely  land  of  vine-clad  hills  and 
opulent  verdure. 

The  period  was  lavish  in  curious  gay  figures  to  set 
against    the    peaceful     background     of    the    landscape. 


64  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

Strolling  players  of  the  open-air  theaters,  jugglers,  fortune- 
tellers, acrobats,  Pierrots,  and  dancers  amused  the 
pleasure-loving  people.  The  band  of  Bohemians  just  de- 
scribed was  but  one  of  many.  Its  peculiarity  consisted 
in  the  presence  among  its  members  of  a  singularly  fair 
and  spirited  child,  about  twelve  years  of  age,  whose  alert 
face  and  gentle  manner  indicated  an  origin  unmistakably 
above  that  of  his  companions.  This  was  little  Jacques 
Callot,  son  of  Renee  Brunehault  and  Jean  Callot,  and 
grandson  of  the  grandniece  of  the  Maid  of  Orleans,  whose 
self-reliant  temper  seems  to  have  found  its  way  to  this 
remote  descendant. 

Already  determined  to  be  an  artist,  he  had  left  home 
with  almost  no  money  in  his  pocket  and  without  the  con- 
sent of  his  parents,  set  upon  finding  his  way  to  Rome, 
where  one  of  his  playfellows  —  the  Israel  Henriet,  "jo« 
flw/,"  whose  name  is  seen  upon  so  many  of  the  later 
Callot  prints  —  was  studying. 

Falling  in  with  the  gipsies,  he  traveled  with  them  for 
six  or  eight  weeks,  receiving  impressions  of  a  flexible, 
wanton,  vagabond  life  that  were  never  entirely  to  lose 
their  influence  upon  his  talent,  although  his  most  tem- 
perate and  scholarly  biographer,  M.  Meaume,  finds  little 
of  Bohemianism  in  his  subsequent  manner  of  living. 
Felibien  records  that  according  to  Callot's  own  account, 
when  he  found  himself  in  such  wicked  company,  "he 


A  SKETCH  IN  OUTLINE  OF  JACQUES  CALLOT       65 

lifted  his  heart  to  God  and  prayed  for  grace  not  to  join 
in  the  disgusting  debauchery  that  went  on  under  his 
eyes."  He  added  also  that  he  always  asked  God  to 
guide  him  and  to  give  him  grace  to  be  a  good  man,  beseech- 
ing Him  that  he  might  excel  in  whatever  profession  he 
should  embrace,  and  that  he  "might  live  to  be  forty- 
three  years  old."  Strangely  enough  this  most  explicit 
prayer  was  granted  to  the  letter,  and  was  a  prophecy  in 
outline  of  his  future. 

Arriving  in  Florence  with  his  friends  the  Bohemians, 
fortune  seemed  about  to  be  gracious  to  him.  His  deli- 
cate face  with  its  indefinable  suggestions  of  good  breed- 
ing attracted  the  attention  of  an  officer  of  the  Duke, 
who  took  the  first  step  toward  fulfilling  his  ambition  by 
placing  him  with  the  painter  and  engraver,  Canta  Gal- 
lina,  who  taught  him  design  and  gave  him  lessons  in  the 
use  of  the  burin.  His  taste  was  already  for  oddly  formed 
or  grotesque  figures,  and  to  counteract  this  tendency 
Gallina  had  him  copy  the  most  beautiful  works  of  the 
great  masters. 

Possibly  this  conventional  beginning  palled  upon  his 
boyish  spirit,  or  he  may  merely  have  been  impatient  to 
reach  Israel  and  behold  with  his  own  eyes  the  golden 
city  described  in  his  friend's  letters.  At  all  events,  he 
shortly  informed  his  master  that  he  must  leave  him  and 
push  on  to  Rome.     Gallina  was  not  lacking  in  sympathy. 


66  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

for  he  gave  his  pupil  a  mule  and  a  purse  and  plenty  of 
good  advice,  and  started  him  on  his  journey. 

Stopping  at  Siena,  Callot  gained  his  first  notion  of 
the  style,  later  to  become  so  indisputably  his  own,  from 
Duccio's  mosaics,  the  pure  unshadowed  outline  of  which 
he  bore  in  mind  when  he  dismissed  shading  and  cross- 
hatching  from  the  marvelously  expressive  little  figures 
that  throng  his  prints.  He  had  hardly  entered  Rome, 
however,  when  some  merchants  from  the  town  of  Nancy, 
his  birthplace,  recognized  him  and  bore  him,  protesting, 
back  to  his  home. 

Once  more  he  ran  away,  this  time  taking  the  route  to 
Italy  through  Savoy  and  leading  adventurous  days.  In 
Turin  he  was  met  by  his  elder  brother  and  again  igno- 
miniously  returned  to  his  parents.  But  his  persistence 
was  not  to  go  unrewarded.  The  third  time  that  he  under- 
took to  seek  the  Hght  burning  for  him  in  the  city  of  art, 
he  went  with  his  father's  blessing,  in  the  suite  of  the  am- 
bassador despatched  to  the  Pope  by  the  new  duke,  Henry 

n. 

It  is  said  that  a  portrait  of  Charles  the  Bold,  engraved 
by  Jacques  from  a  painting,  was  what  finally  turned 
the  scale  in  favor  of  his  studying  seriously  with  the  pur- 
pose of  making  art  his  profession.  He  had  gained  smat- 
terings of  knowledge,  so  far  as  the  use  of  his  tools  went, 
from  Dumange  Crocq,  an  engraver  and  Master  of  the 


A  SKETCH  IN  OUTLINE  OF  JACQUES  CALLOT       67 

Mint  to  the  Duke  of  Lorraine,  and  from  his  friend  Is- 
rael's father,  chief  painter  to  Charles  III.  He  had  the 
habit  also  of  sketching  on  the  spot  whatever  happened 
to  attract  his  attention. 

In  truth  he  had  lost  but  little  time.  At  the  age  of 
seventeen  he  was  at  work,  and  very  hard  at  work,  in 
Rome  under  Tempesta.  Money  failing  him,  he  became 
apprenticed  to  Philippe  Thomassin,  a  French  engraver, 
who  turned  out  large  numbers  of  rubbishy  prints  upon 
which  his  apprentices  were  employed  at  so  much  a  day. 
Some  three  years  spent  in  this  fashion  taught  Callot 
less  art  than  skill  in  the  manipulation  of  his  instruments. 
Much  of  his  early  work  is  buried  in  the  mass  of  Thomas- 
sin's  production,  and  such  of  it  as  can  be  identified  is 
poor  and  trivial.  His  precocity  was  not  the  indication 
of  rapid  progress.  His  drawing  was  feeble  and  was  al- 
most entirely  confined  to  copying  until  16 16,  when,  at 
the  age  of  twenty-four,  he  began  regularly  to  engrave 
his  own  designs,  and  to  show  the  individuality  of  treat- 
ment and  the  abundant  fancy  that  promptly  won  for 
him  the  respect  of  his  contemporaries. 

While  he  was  in  Thomassin's  studio,  it  is  reported 
that  his  bright  charm  of  face  and  manner  gained  him 
the  liking  of  Thomassin's  young  wife  —  much  nearer 
in  age  to  Callot  than  to  her  husband  —  and  the  jealousy 
of  his  master.     He  presently  left  the  studio  and  Rome 


68  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

as  well,  never  to  return  to  either.  It  is  the  one  misad- 
venture suggestive  of  erratic  tendencies  admitted  to 
Callot's  story  by  M,  Meaume,  although  other  biographers 
have  thrown  over  his  life  in  Italy  a  sufficiently  lurid  light, 
hinting  at  revelries  and  vagaries  and  lawless  impulses  unre- 
strained. If,  indeed,  the  brilliant  frivoHty  of  Italian 
society  at  that  time  tempted  him  during  his  early  man- 
hood, it  could  only  have  been  for  a  brief  space  of  years. 
After  he  was  thirty  all  unquestionably  was  labor  and 
quietness. 

From  Rome  he  went  to  Florence,  taking  with  him 
some  of  the  plates  he  recently  had  engraved.  These 
at  once  found  favor  in  the  eyes  of  Cosimo  II,  of  the  Med- 
ici then  ruling  over  Tuscany,  and  Callot  was  attached  to 
his  person  and  given  a  pension  and  quarters  in  what 
was  called,  "the  artist's  gallery."  At  the  same  time  he 
began  to  study  under  the  then  famous  Jules  Parigi,  and 
renewed  his  acquaintance  with  his  old  friend  Canta 
Gallina,  meeting  in  their  studios  the  most  eminent  ar- 
tists of  the  day  —  the  bright  day  not  yet  entirely  faded 
of  the  later  Renaissance. 

Still  his  work  was  copying  and  engraving  from  the 
drawings  of  others.  Had  he  been  under  a  master  less 
interested  and  sympathetic  than  the  good  Parigi,  it  is 
possible  that  his  peculiar  talent  would  never  have  de- 
clared itself.     At  all  events,  Parigi  urged  him,  and  the 


Portrait  of  Jacques  Callot 

Engraved   by    f^osterman    after  the   painting   of 

Van  Dyck 


A  SKETCH  IN  OUTLINE  OF  JACQUES  CALLOT       69 

urging  seems  to  have  been  necessary,  to  improve  his 
drawing,  to  drop  the  burin  and  study  the  great  masters. 
Especially  Parigi  prayed  him  to  cultivate  his  precious 
talent  for  designing  on  a  very  small  scale  the  varied  and 
complicated  compositions  with  which  his  imagination 
teemed.  His  taste  for  whatever  was  fantastic  and  irreg- 
ular in  aspect  had  not  been  destroyed  by  his  study  of 
the  beautiful.  The  Bohemian  side  of  human  nature, 
the  only  nature  for  which  he  cared,  still  fascinated  his 
mind,  whether  it  had  or  had  not  any  influence  upon  his 
activities,  and  Parigi's  remonstrances  were  silenced  by 
his  appreciation  of  the  comic  wit  sparkling  in  his  pupil's 
sketches. 

We  see  little  of  Callot  among  his  friends  of  this  period, 
but  the  glimpses  we  get  reveal  a  lovable  and  merry  youth 
in  whose  nature  is  a  strain  of  sturdy  loyalty,  ardent  in 
work  and  patient  in  seeking  perfectness  in  each  individ- 
ual task  undertaken,  but  with  a  curious  contrasting  im- 
patience as  well,  leading  him  frequently  to  drop  one 
thing  for  another,  craving  the  relaxation  of  change.  An 
anecdote  is  told  of  him  that  illustrates  the  sweet-tempered 
blitheness  of  spirit  with  which  he  quickly  won  aff^ection. 

In  copying  a  head  he  had  fallen  into  an  error  common 
among  those  who  draw  most  successfully  upon  a  small 
scale,  he  had  made  it  much  too  large.  His  fellow-students 
were  prompt  to  seize  the  opportunity  of  jeering  at  him, 


70  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

and  he  at  once  improvised  a  delightful  crowd  of  impish 
creatures  on  the  margin  of  his  drawing,  dancing  and 
pointing  at  it  in  derision. 

His  progress  under  Parigi's  wise  instruction  was 
marked,  but  it  was  four  years  after  his  arrival  in  Flor- 
ence before  he  began  to  engrave  to  any  extent  from  his 
own  designs.  In  the  meantime,  he  had  studied  archi- 
tecture and  aerial  and  linear  perspective,  and  had  made 
innumerable  pen  and  pencil  drawings  from  nature.  He 
had  also  begun  to  practice  etching,  attaining  great  dex- 
terity in  the  use  of  the  needle  and  in  the  employment  of 
acids. 

In  1617  —  then  twenty-five  years  old  —  he  produced 
the  series  of  plates  which  he  rightly  deemed  the  first 
ripe  fruits  of  his  long  toil  in  the  domain  of  art.  These 
were  the  delightful  Capricci  di  varie  figure  in  which  his 
individuality  shone  resplendent.  They  reproduced  the 
spectacle  of  Florence  as  it  might  then  have  been  seen  by 
any  wayfarer;  street  people,  soldiers,  officers,  honest 
tradesmen  and  rogues,  mandolin  players,  loiterers  of 
the  crossways  and  bridges,  turnpike-keepers,  cut-throats, 
buflPoons  and  comedians,  grimacing  pantaloons,  fops, 
coquettes,  country  scenes,  a  faithful  and  brilliant  study 
of  the  time,  the  manners,  and  the  place.  Parigi  was 
enthusiastic  and  advised  his  pupil  to  dedicate  the  plates 
to  the  brother  of  the  Grand  Duke. 


A  SKETCH  IN  OUTLINE  OF  JACQUES  CALLOT       71 

After  this  all  went  well  and  swiftly.  Passing  over 
many  plates,  important  and  unimportant,  we  come  three 
years  later  to  the  Great  Fair  of  Florencey  pronounced  by 
M.  Meaume,  Callot's  masterpiece.  "It  is  doubtful," 
says  this  excellent  authority,  "if  in  Callot's  entire  work 
a  single  other  plate  can  be  found  worthy  to  compete 
with  the  Great  Fair  of  Florence.  He  has  done  as  well, 
perhaps,  but  never  better." 

At  this  time  his  production  was,  all  of  it,  full  of  life 
and  spirit,  vivacious  and  fluent,  the  very  joy  of  work- 
manship. He  frequently  began  and  finished  a  plate  in 
a  day,  and  his  long  apprenticeship  to  his  tools  had  made 
him  completely  their  master.  In  many  of  the  prints 
are  found  traces  of  dry  point,  and  those  who  looked  on 
while  he  worked  have  testified  that  when  a  blank  space  on 
his  plate  displeased  him  he  was  wont  to  take  up  his  instru- 
ment and  engrave  a  figure,  a  bit  of  drapery,  or  some 
trees  in  the  empty  spaces,  directly  upon  the  copper,  im- 
provising from  his  ready  fancy. 

For  recreation  he  commonly  turned  to  some  other 
form  of  his  craft.  He  tried  painting,  and  some  of  his 
admirers  would  like  to  prove  that  he  was  a  genius  in 
this  sort,  but  it  is  fairly  settled  that  when  once  he  became 
entangled  in  the  medium  of  color  he  was  lost,  producing 
the  heaviest  and  most  unpleasing  effects,  and  that  he 
produced  no  finished  work  in  this  kind.     He  contributed 


72  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

to  the  technical  outfit  of  the  etcher  a  new  varnish,  the 
hard  varnish  of  the  lute-makers  which  up  to  that  time 
had  not  been  used  in  etching,  and  which,  substituted 
for  the  soft  ground,  enabled  him  to  execute  his  marvel- 
ous little  figures  with  great  lightness  and  delicacy,  and 
also  made  it  possible  for  him  to  keep  several  plates  going 
at  once,  as  he  delighted  to  do,  turning  from  one  to  another 
as  his  mood  prompted  him. 

This  Florentine  period  was  one  of  countless  satisfac- 
tions for  him.  More  fortunate  than  many  artists,  he 
won  his  fame  in  time  to  enjoy  it.  His  productions  were 
so  highly  regarded  during  his  lifetime  that  good  proofs 
were  eagerly  sought,  and  to  use  Baldinucci's  expression, 
were  *'  enfermees  sous  sept  clefs."  He  was  known  all  over 
Europe,  and  about  his  neck  he  wore  a  magnificent  gold 
chain  given  him  by  the  Grand  Duke  Cosimo  H,  in  token 
of  esteem.  In  the  town  which  he  had  entered  so  few 
years  before  in  the  gipsy  caravan,  he  was  now  the  arbiter 
of  taste  in  all  matters  of  art,  highly  honored,  and  friend 
of  the  great.  When  Cosimo  died  and  the  pensions  of 
the  artists  were  discontinued,  Callot  was  quite  past  the 
need  of  princely  favors,  and  could  choose  his  own  path. 
He  had  already  refused  oflPers  from  Pope  and  emperor 
and  doubtless  would  have  remained  in  Florence  had 
not  Prince  Charles  of  Lorraine  determined  to  reclaim 
him  for  his  native  place. 


A  SKETCH  IN  OUTLINE  OF  JACQUES  CALLOT        ']^ 

In  1 62 1  or  1622  he  returned  to  Nancy,  never  again  to 
live  in  Italy.  He  went  back  preeminent  among  his 
countrymen.  He  had  done  in  etching  what  had  not  been 
done  before  him  and  much  that  has  not  been  done  since. 
He  had  created  a  new  genre  and  a  new  treatment.  He 
had  been  faithful  to  his  first  lesson  from  Duccio  and  had 
become  eloquent  in  his  use  of  simple  outline  to  express 
joy,  fear,  calm  or  sorrow,  his  work  gaining  from  this 
abandonment  of  shadows  a  largeness  and  clearness  that 
separates  him  from  his  German  contemporaries  and  adds 
dignity  to  the  elegance  and  grace  of  his  figures.  His 
skill  with  the  etching  needle  had  become  so  great  that 
technical  difficulties  practically  did  not  exist  for  him. 
What  he  wished  to  do  he  did  with  obvious  ease  and 
always  with  distinction.  His  feeling  for  synthesis  and 
balance  was  as  striking  as  his  love  of  the  curious,  and  as 
these  qualities  seldom  go  together  in  one  mind,  the  re- 
sult was  an  art  extremely  unlike  that  of  other  artists. 
It  was  characteristic  of  him  that  he  could  not  copy  him- 
self, and  found  himself  completely  at  a  loss  when  he 
tried  to  repeat  some  of  his  Florentine  plates  under  other 
skies. 

Arrived  at  Nancy,  he  found  Henry  II,  the  then  reign- 
ing Duke  of  Lorraine,  ready  to  accord  him  a  flat- 
tering welcome,  and  under  his  favor  he  worked  with  in- 
creasing   success.    Among   the    plates    produced    shortly 


74  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

after  his  return  is  one  called  Les  Supplices^  in  which  is 
represented  all  the  punishments  inflicted  throughout 
Europe  upon  criminals  and  legal  offenders.  In  an  im- 
mense square  the  revolting  scenes  are  taking  place,  and 
innumerable  little  figures  swarm  about  the  streets  and 
even  upon  the  roofs  of  the  houses.  Yet  the  impression 
is  neither  confused  nor  painful,  A  certain  impersonality 
in  the  rendering,  a  serious  almost  melancholy  austerity 
of  touch  robs  the  spectacle  of  its  ignoble  suggestion. 
Inspection  of  this  remarkable  plate  makes  it  easy  to  real- 
ize Callot's  supreme  fitness  for  the  tasks  that  shortly 
were  to  be  laid  upon  him. 

He  was  chosen  by  the  Infanta  Elisabeth-Claire-Eu- 
genie of  Austria  to  commemorate  the  Siege  of  Breda,  in 
a  series  of  etchings,  and  while  he  was  in  Brussels  gather- 
ing his  materials  for  this  tremendous  work  he  came  to 
know  Van  Dyck,  who  painted  his  portrait  afterward 
engraved  by  Vosterman,  a  superb  delineation  of  both 
his  face  and  character  at  this  important  period  of  his 
eminent  career.  Soon  after  the  etchings  were  completed, 
designs  were  ordered  by  Charles  IV,  for  the  decorations 
of  the  great  carnival  of  1827.  Callot  was  summoned  to 
Paris  to  execute  some  plates  representing  the  surrender 
of  La  Rochelle  in  1828,  and  the  prior  attack  upon  the 
fortress  of  St.  Martin  on  the  Isle  of  Re.  In  Paris  he 
dwelt  with  his  old  friend  Israel  Henriet,  who  dealt  largely 


A  SKETCH  IN  OUTLINE  OF  JACQUES  CALLOT       75 

in  prints  and  who  had  followed  with  keen  attention  Cal- 
lot's  constantly  increasing  renown.  Henriet  naturally 
tried  to  keep  his  friend  with  him  in  Paris  as  long  as 
possible,  but  Callot  had  lost  by  this  time  the  vagrant 
tendencies  of  his  youth.  He  was  married  and  of  a  home- 
keeping  disposition,  and  all  that  Henriet  could  throw  in 
his  way  of  stimulating  tasks  and  congenial  society,  in 
addition  to  the  formidable  orders  for  which  he  had  con- 
tracted, detained  him  hardly  longer  than  a  year.  Upon 
leaving  he  made  over  all  his  Parisian  plates  save  those 
of  the  great  sieges  to  Henriet,  whose  name  as  publisher 
appears  upon  them. 

Callot's  return  to  Nancy  marked  the  close  of  the  second 
period  of  his  art,  the  period  in  which  he  painted  battles 
with  ten  thousand  episodes  revealed  in  one  plate,  and  so 
accurately  that  men  of  war  kept  his  etchings  among 
their  text-books  for  professional  reference.  The  next 
demand  that  was  made  upon  him  to  represent  the  down- 
fall of  a  brave  city  came  from  Louis  XHI,  upon  the 
occasion  of  his  entering  Nancy  on  the  25th  of  September, 
1633.  ^y  ^  ^"^^  Richelieu  had  made  the  entry  possible, 
and  the  inglorious  triumph  Louis  deemed  worthy  of 
commemoration  by  the  accomplished  engraver  now  his 
subject.  Neither  Callot's  high  Lorraine  heart  nor  his 
brilliant  instrument  was  subjugated,  however,  and  he 
respectfully  begged  the  monarch  to  absolve  him  from  a 


76  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

task  so  revolting  to  his  patriotism.  "Sire,"  he  said,  "I 
am  of  Lorraine,  and  I  cannot  beheve  it  my  duty  to  do 
anything  contrary  to  the  honor  of  my  Prince  and  my 
Country."  The  king  accepted  his  remonstrance  in  good 
part,  declaring  that  Monsieur  of  Lorraine  was  very  happy 
to  have  subjects  so  faithful  in  affection.  Certain  cour- 
tiers took  Callot  to  task,  however,  for  his  refusal  to  obey 
the  will  of  His  Majesty,  and  to  them  Callot  responded 
that  he  would  cut  off  his  thumb  rather  than  do  violence 
to  his  sense  of  honor.  Some  of  the  artist's  historians  have 
made  him  address  this  impetuous  reply  to  the  king  him- 
self, but  M.  Meaume  reminds  us  that,  familiar  with 
courts,  he  knew  too  well  the  civility  due  to  a  sovereign 
to  make  it  probable  that  he  so  forgot  his  dignity.  Later 
the  king  tried  to  allure  Callot  by  gifts,  honors  and  pen- 
sions, but  in  vain.  The  sturdy  gentleman  preferred  his 
oppressed  prince  to  the  royal  favor,  and  set  himself  to 
immortalizing  the  misfortunes  of  his  country  in  the 
superb  series  of  etchings  which  he  called  '*  Les  Miseres 
de  la  Guerre.^*  He  made  six  little  plates  showing  in 
the  life  of  the  soldier  the  misery  he  both  endures  and 
inflicts  upon  others.  These  were  the  first  free  inspira- 
tion of  the  incomparable  later  set  called  ^*  Les  Grandes 
Miseres"  "a  veritable  poem,"  M.  Meaume  declares, 
"a  funeral  ode  describing  and  deploring  the  sorrows 
of  Lorraine."     These   sorrows   so    much    afflicted    him 


A  SKETCH  IN  OUTLINE  OF  JACQUES  CALLOT       77 

that  he  would  gladly  have  gone  back  to  Italy  to  spend 
the  last  years  of  his  life,  had  not  the  condition  of  his 
health,  brought  on  by  his  indefatigable  labor,  prevented 
him. 

He  lived  simply  in  the  little  town  where  he  had  seen 
his  young  visions  of  the  spirit  of  art,  walking  in  the  early 
morning  with  his  elder  brother,  attending  mass,  working 
until  dinner  time,  visiting  in  the  early  afternoon  with 
the  persons,  many  of  them  distinguished  and  even  of 
royal  blood,  who  thronged  his  studio,  then  working  until 
evening.  He  rarely  attended  the  court,  but  grew  con- 
stantly more  quiet  in  taste  and  more  severe  in  his  artistic 
method,  until  the  feeling  for  the  grotesque  that  inspired 
his  earlier  years  were  hardly  to  be  discerned.  Once 
only,  in  the  tremendous  plate  illustrating  the  Tempta- 
tion of  Saint  Anthony,  did  he  return  to  his  old  bizarre 
vision  of  a  world  conceived  in  the  mood  of  Dante  and 
Ariosto. 

Callot  died  on  the  24th  of  March,  1635,  at  the  age  of 
forty-three.  Still  a  young  man,  he  had  passed  through 
all  the  phases  of  temperament  that  commonly  mark  the 
transit  from  youth  to  age.  And  he  had  used  his  art  in 
the  manner  of  a  master  to  express  the  external  world 
and  his  convictions  concerning  the  great  spiritual  and 
ethical  questions  of  his  age.  He  enunciated  his  mes- 
sage distinctly;  there  were  no  tender  gradations,  no  un- 


78  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

certainties  of  outline  or  mysteries  of  surface  in  his  work. 
It  is  the  grave  utterance  of  the  definite  French  intelli- 
gence with  a  note  of  deeper  suggestion  brought  from 
those  regions  of  ironic  gloom  in  which  the  Florentine 
recorded  his  sublime  despair. 


CARLO  CRIVELLI 


VI 

Carlo  Crivelli 

AMONG  the  more  interesting  pictures  acquired  by 
the  MetropoHtan  Museum  within  the  past  two  years 
are  the  panels  by  Carlo  Crivelli,  representing  respect- 
ively St.  George  and  St.  Dominic. 

Crivelli  is  one  of  the  fifteenth  century  Italian  masters 
who  show  their  temperament  in  their  work  with  extraor- 
dinary clearness.  His  spirit  was  ardent  and  his  moods 
were  varying.  With  far  less  technical  skill  than  his 
contemporary,  Mantegna,  he  has  at  once  a  warmer  and 
more  brilliant  style  and  a  more  modern  feeling  for  nat- 
ural and  significant  gesture.  His  earliest  known  work 
that  bears  a  date  is  the  altar-piece  in  S.  Silvestro  at  Massa 
near  Fermo;  but  his  most  recent  biographer,  Mr.  Rush- 
worth,  gives  to  his  Venetian  period  before  he  left  for 
the  Marches,  the  Virgin  and  Child  now  at  Verona,  and 
sees  in  this  the  strongest  evidences  of  his  connection 
with  the  School  of  Padua.  Other  important  pictures 
by  him  are  at  Ascoli,  in  the  Lateran  Gallery,  Rome,  in 
the  Vatican,  in  the  Brera  Gallery  at  Milan,  in  the  Berlin 

8i 


82  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

Gallery,  in  the  National  Gallery  at  London,  in  Frank- 
furt (the  Stadel  Gallery)  in  the  Museum  of  Brussels, 
in  Lord  Northbrook's  collection,  London,  in  the  Boston 
Museum,  in  Mrs.  Gardiner's  collection  at  Boston,  and 
in  Mr.  Johnson's  collection  at  Philadelphia.  The  eight 
examples  in  the  National  Gallery,  although  belonging 
for  the  most  part  to  his  later  period,  show  his  wide  range 
and  his  predominating  characteristics,  which  indeed  are 
stamped  with  such  emphasis  upon  each  of  his  works 
that  despite  the  many  and  great  differences  in  these, 
there  seems  to  be  little  difficulty  in  recognizing  their 
authorship.  No.  788,  The  Madonna  and  Child  En- 
throned, surrounded  by  Saints,  an  altarpiece  painted  for 
the  Dominican  Church  at  Ascoli  in  1476,  is  the  most 
elaborate  and  pretentious  of  the  National  Gallery  com- 
positions, but  fails  as  a  whole  to  give  that  impression 
of  moral  and  physical  energy,  of  intense  feeling  expressed 
with  serene  art,  which  renders  the  Annunciation  (No. 
739)  both  impressive  and  ingratiating.  The  lower  cen- 
tral compartment  is  instinct  with  grace  and  tenderness. 
The  Virgin,  mild-faced  and  melancholy,  is  seated  on  a 
marble  throne.  The  Child  held  on  her  arm,  droops 
his  head,  heavy  ^yith  sleep,  upon  her  arm  in  a  babyish 
and  appealing  attitude  curiously  opposed  to  the  dignity 
of  the  Child  in  Mantegna's  group  which  hangs  on  the 
opposite  wall.     His  hand  clasps  his  mother's  finger  and 


CARLO  CRIVELLI  83 

his  completely  relaxed  figure  has  unquestionably  been 
studied  from  life.  At  the  right  and  left  of  the  Virgin  are 
St.  Peter  and  St.  John,  St.  Catherine  of  Alexandria  and 
St.  Dominic,  whole-length  figures  strongly  individualized 
and  differentiated.  St.  John  in  particular  reveals  in 
the  beauty  of  feature  and  expression  Crivelli's  power  to 
portray  subtleties  and  refinements  of  character  without 
sacrificing  his  sumptuous  taste  for  accessories  and  orna- 
ment. The  Saint,  wearing  his  traditional  sheep  skin 
and  bearing  his  cross  and  scroll,  bends  his  head  in  medi- 
tation. His  brows  are  knit,  his  features,  ascetic  in  mold 
and  careworn,  are  eloquent  of  serious  thought  and  moral 
conviction.  By  the  side  of  St.  Peter  resplendent  in  pon- 
tifical robes  and  enriched  with  jewels,  he  wears  the  look 
of  a  young  devout  novice  not  yet  so  familiar  with  sanctity 
as  to  carry  it  with  ease.  He  stands  by  the  side  of  a  little 
stream,  in  a  landscape  that  combines  in  the  true  Crivelli 
manner  direct  realism  with  decorative  formality.  The 
St.  Dominic  with  book  and  lily  in  type  resembles  the 
figure  in  the  Metropolitan,  but  the  face  is  painted  with 
greater  skill  and  has  more  vigor  of  expression.  Above 
this  lower  stage  of  the  altarpiece  are  four  half-length 
figures  of  St.  Francis,  St.  Andrew  the  Apostle,  St.  Stephen 
and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  over  these  again  are  four 
pictures  showing  the  Archangel  Michael  trampling  on 
the  Dragon,  St.  Lucy  the  Martyr,  St.  Jerome  and  St. 


84  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

Peter,  Martyr,  all  full  length  figures  of  small  size  and 
delicately  drawn,  but  which  do  not  belong  to  the  orig- 
inal series.  The  various  parts  of  the  altarpiece  were 
enclosed  in  a  splendid  and  ornate  frame  while  in  the  pos- 
session of  Prince  Demidoff  in  the  latter  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  and  the  whole  is  a  magnificent  monument 
to  Crivelli's  art.  The  heavy  gold  backgrounds  and 
the  free  use  of  gold  in  the  ornaments,  together  with 
the  use  of  high  relief  (St.  Peter's  keys  are  modeled,  for 
example,  almost  in  the  round,  so  nearly  are  they  de- 
tached from  the  panel)  represent  his  tendency  to  over- 
load his  compositions  with  archaic  and  reahstic  detail, 
but  here  as  elsewhere  the  effect  is  one  of  harmony  and 
corporate  unity  of  many  parts.  The  introduction  of 
sham  jewels,  such  as  those  set  in  the  Virign's  crown 
and  in  the  rings  and  medallions  worn  by  Peter,  fails  to 
destroy  the  dignity  of  the  execution.  It  may  even  be 
argued  that  these  details  enhance  it  by  affording  a  salient 
support  to  the  strongly  marked  emotional  faces  of  the 
saints  and  to  the  vigorous  gestures  which  would  be  vio- 
lent in  a  classic  setting. 

A  quite  different  note  is  struck  in  the  grave  little  com- 
position belonging  to  an  altarpiece  of  early  date  in  which 
two  infant  angels  support  the  body  of  Christ  on  the 
edge  of  the  tomb.  Nothing  is  permitted  to  interrupt 
the  simplicity  of  this  pathetic  group.     In  the  much  more 


St.  Dominic 
From  a  panel  by  Carlo  Crivelli 


CARLO  CRIVELLI  85 

passionate  rendering  of  a  similar  subject  —  the  Pieta 
in  Mr.  Johnson's  collection  —  the  child  angels  are  rep- 
resented in  an  agony  of  grief,  their  features  contorted 
and  their  gestures  despairing.  The  little  angels  of  the 
National  Gallery  picture,  on  the  contrary,  are  but  touched 
by  a  pensive  sorrow.  One  of  them  rests  his  chin  upon 
the  shoulder  of  the  Christ  half  tenderly,  half  wearily;  the 
other  in  fluttering  robes  of  a  lovely  yellow,  applies  his 
slight  strength  to  his  task  seriously  but  without  emo- 
tion. The  figure  of  Christ,  tragically  quiet,  with  suffer- 
ing brows,  the  wound  in  the  side  gaping,  is  without  the 
suggestion  of  extreme  physical  anguish  that  mark  the 
figure  in  the  Boston  Pieta.  The  sentiment  with  which 
the  panel  is  inspired  is  one  of  gentleness,  of  resignation, 
of  self-control  and  piety.  The  same  sentiment  is  felt  in 
the  companion  panel,  now  in  the  Brussels  Gallery  —  The 
Virgin  and  the  Child  Jesus — which  originally,  with  the 
Pieta,  formed  the  central  double  compartment  of  a  trip- 
tych at  Monte  Fiore,  near  Fermo.  The  sad  coloring  of 
the  Virgin's  robe  —  a  dull  bluish  green  with  a  gold  pat- 
tern over  an  under  robe  of  pale  ashes  of  roses,  the  calm, 
benign  features,  the  passive  hands,  are  all  in  the  spirit  of 
subdued  feeling.  The  child  alone,  gnomish  in  expression 
and  awkward  in  a  straddling  attitude  upon  his  mother's 
knee,  fails  to  conform  to  the  general  gracious  scheme. 
In    the    Annunciation    already    mentioned,    we    have 


86  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

another  phase  of  Crivelli's  flexible  genius  —  a  phase  in 
which  are  united  the  pomp  and  splendor  of  his  fantastic 
taste  with  the  innocence  and  sweetness  of  his  most  en- 
gaging feminine  type.  It  would  be  difficult  to  imagine 
a  more  demure  and  girlish  Virgin  than  the  small  kneeling 
figure  in  the  richly  furnished  chamber  at  the  right  of  the 
panel.  The  glory  of  her  fate  is  symbolized  by  the  broad 
golden  ray  falling  from  the  heavens  upon  her  meekly 
bowed  head.  Her  face  is  pale  with  the  dim  pallor  that 
commonly  rests  upon  Crivelli's  flesh  tones,  and  her 
clasped  hands  have  the  exaggerated  length  of  finger  and 
also  the  look  of  extraordinary  pliability  which  he  invari- 
ably gives.  Outside  the  room  in  the  open  court  kneels 
the  Angel  of  the  Annunciation  and  by  his  side  kneels 
St.  Emedius,  the  patron  of  Ascoli,  with  a  model  of  the 
city  in  his  hands.  These  figures  are  realistic  in  gesture 
and  expression,  interested,  eager,  responsive,  filled  with 
quick  life  and  joyous  impulse.  The  richly  embroidered 
garment  of  the  angel,  his  gilded  wings,  his  traditional 
attitude,  neither  overpower  nor  detract  from  the  vivid 
individuality  of  the  beautiful  face  so  firmly  yet  so  freely 
modeled  within  its  delicate  hard  bounding  line.  This 
feeling  of  actuality  in  the  scene  is  carried  still  farther 
by  the  introduction  of  a  charming  little  child  on  a  bal- 
cony at  the  left,  peering  out  from  behind  a  pillar  with 
naive    curiosity    and    half-shy,    half-bold    determination 


In  ttic  Metropolitan  Museum,  New  York. 

St.  George 
From  a  panel  by  Carlo  Crivellt 


CARLO  CRIVELLI  87 

to  see  the  end  of  the  adventure.  All  this  is  conceived 
in  the  spirit  of  modernity  and  the  personal  quality  is 
unmistakable  and  enchanting.  There  is  no  excess  of 
emotion  nor  is  there  undue  restraint.  There  is  a  blithe 
sense  of  the  interest  of  life  and  the  personality  of  human 
beings  that  gives  a  value  to  the  subject  and  a  meaning 
beyond  its  accepted  symbolism.  On  the  technical  side, 
also,  the  panel  has  remarkable  merit  even  for  this  expert 
and  careful  painter.  His  Venetian  fondness  for  mag- 
nificent externals  finds  ample  expression  in  the  rich  acces- 
sories. A  peacock  is  perched  on  the  casement  of  the 
Virgin's  room,  flowers  and  fruits,  vases  and  variegated 
marbles  all  come  into  the  plan  of  the  handsome  environ- 
ment, and  are  justified  artistically  by  the  differentiation 
of  textures,  the  gradation  of  color,  the  research  into  in- 
tricacies of  pattern,  the  light  firm  treatment  of  architec- 
tural structure,  and  the  skilful  subordination  of  all 
superficial  detail  to  the  elements  of  the  human  drama, 
the  figures  of  which  occupy  little  space,  but  are 
overwhelming  in  significance. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  this  Annunciation  with 
the  two  small  sextagonal  panels  of  the  same  subject  in 
the  Stadel  Museum  at  Frankfurt  which  are  earlier  in 
date.  In  many  respects  the  compositions  are  closely 
similar.  There  is  the  same  red  brick  wall,  the  same  Ori- 
ental rug  hanging  from  the  casement,  the  types  of  Angel 


88  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

and  Virgin  are  the  same,  but  in  the  Frankfurt  panel  there 
is  more  impetuous  motion  in  the  gesture  of  the  Angel, 
who  hardly  pauses  in  his  flight  through  air  to  touch  his 
knee  to  the  parapet.  His  mouth  is  open  and  the  words 
of  his  message  seem  trembling  on  his  lips.  Although  all 
the  outlines  are  severely  defined  with  the  sharpness  of  a 
Schiavone,  the  interior  modeling  is  sensitive  and  delicate 
and  in  the  case  of  the  Virgin,  tender  and  softly  varied,  so 
that  the  curve  of  the  throat  and  chin  seem  almost  to  ripple 
with  the  breathing,  the  young  chest  swells  in  lovely  grada- 
tion of  form  under  the  close  bodice,  and  the  whole  figure 
has  a  graciousness  of  contour,  a  slim  roundness  and  elas- 
ticity by  which  it  takes  its  place  among  Crivelli's  many 
realizations  of  his  ideal  type  as  at  least  one  of  the  most 
lovable  if  not  the  most  characteristic  and  personal.  Es- 
pecially fine,  also,  is  the  treatment  of  the  drapery  in  these 
two  admirable  little  panels.  The  mantle  surrounding 
the  angel  billows  out  in  curling  folds  as  eloquent  of  swift 
movement  as  the  draperies  of  Botticelli's  striding  nymphs; 
and  the  opulent  line  of  the  Virgin's  cloak  is  superb  in 
its  lightly  broken  swirl  about  the  figure.  The  hair,  too, 
of  both  the  Angel  and  the  Virgin,  waves  in  masses  at 
once  free  and  formal,  with  something  of  the  wild  beauty 
of  Botticelli's  windblown  tresses.  The  analogy  between 
the  two  painters,  the  ardent  and  poetic  Florentine  and 
the  no  less  ardent  and  at  times  almost  as  poetic  Venetian 


)  x  •  M^«  ■«.•  M(  •  m  •  M  •  >«  •  »<l  •  M.*  ««.•  M.M  M.vm.V' 


In  the  Metropolitan  Museum,  New  York. 


Pi  ETA 
From  a  panel  by  Carlo  Crivelli 


CARLO  CRIVELLI  89 

(if  we  accept  his  own  claim  to  the  title),  might  be  further 
dwelt  upon,  although  it  would  be  easy  to  overemphasize 
it.  One  attribute,  certainly,  they  had  in  common  and 
it  is  the  one  that  most  completely  separates  each  of  them 
from  his  fellows  —  the  exultant  verve,  that  is,  with  which 
the  human  form  is  made  to  communicate  energy  of  move- 
ment in  their  compositions.  It  is  impossible  to  believe 
that  either  of  them  ever  painted  a  tame  picture.  If, 
however,  Crivelli  could  not  be  tame  he  could  be  insipid, 
escaping  tameness  by  what  might  be  called  the  violence 
of  his  affectation.  The  St.  George  in  the  Metropolitan 
Museum  is  an  instance  of  his  occasional  use  of  a  type  so 
frail  and  languid  in  its  grace  and  so  sentimental  in  ges- 
ture and  expression  as  to  suggest  caricature.  Another 
example  dated  149 1  is  the  Madonna  and  Child  Enthroned 
in  the  National  Gallery.  On  either  side  of  the  melan- 
choly Madonna  are  St.  Francis  and  St.  Sebastian.  The 
latter  is  pierced  by  arrows  and  tied  to  a  pillar,  but  so 
far  from  wearing  the  look  of  suffering  or  of  calm  endur- 
ance, he  has  a  trivial  glance  of  deprecation  for  the  ob- 
server, and  his  figure  is  wholly  wanting  in  the  force  of 
young  manhood.  A  striking  contrast  to  this  effeminate 
mood  may  be  found  in  No.  724,  also  a  Madonna  En- 
throned, between  St.  Jerome  and  St.  Sebastian,  a  late 
signed  picture  of  Crivelli's  declining  talent,  with  a  pre- 
della  below  the  chief  panel  in  which   appear  St.   Cathe- 


90  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

rine,  St.  Jerome  in  the  Wilderness,  the  Nativity,  the 
Martyrdom  of  St.  Sebastian  again,  and  St.  George  and 
the  Dragon.  The  little  compartment  containing  the 
scene  of  the  Nativity  is  quite  by  itself  among  Crivelli's 
works  for  intimate  and  homely  charm.  The  simplicity 
of  the  surroundings  and  the  natural  attitudes  of  the 
people  have  an  almost  Dutch  character,  borne  out  by 
the  meticulous  care  for  detail  in  the  execution  united  to 
an  effect  of  chiaro-oscuro  very  rare  in  early  Italian  art 
and  hardly  to  be  expected  in  a  painter  of  Crivelli's  Pad- 
uan  tendencies.  The  St.  George  is  more  characteristic, 
with  an  immense  energy  in  its  lines.  In  arrangement 
it  recalls  the  St.  George  of  Mrs.  Gardiner's  collection 
and  despite  its  small  size  is  almost  the  equal  of  that  mag- 
nificent example  in  concentration  and  fire. 

Still  another  type,  and  one  that  combines  dignity  and 
much  spirituality  with  naive  realism,  is  the  Beato  Fer. 
retti  (No.  668),  showing  an  open  landscape  with  a  vil- 
lage street  at  the  right  and  a  couple  of  ducks  in  a  small 
pond  at  the  left,  the  Beato  kneeling  in  adoration  with  a 
vision  of  the  Virgin  and  Child  surrounded  by  the  Man- 
dorla  or  Verica  glory  appearing  above.  The  kneeling 
saint  is  realistically  drawn  and  his  face  wears  an  expres- 
sion of  intense  piety.  The  landscape  is  marked  by  the 
bare  twisted  stems  of  trees,  that  seem  to  repeat  the  rigid 
and  conceivably  tortured  form  of  the  saint.     A  beautiful 


In  the  Stadcl  Gallery  at  Frankfort. 

A  Panel  by  Carlo  Crivelli  (a) 


CARLO  CRIVELLI  9 1 

building  with  a  domed  roof  is  seen  at  the  right.  At 
the  top  of  the  picture  across  the  cloud-strewn  sky  is  a 
festoon  of  fruits,  Crivelli's  characteristic  decoration. 

In  all  these  pictures  Crivelli  reveals  himself  as  an  ar- 
tist filled  with  emotional  inspiration,  to  whom  the  thrill 
of  life  is  more  than  its  trappings,  and  one,  moreover,  who 
observes,  balances  and  differentiates.  The  society  of 
his  saints  and  angels  is  stimulating;  the  element  of  the 
unexpected  enters  into  his  work  in  open  defiance  of  his 
pronounced  mannerism.  It  is  possible  to  detect  be- 
neath the  close  and  manifold  coverings  of  his  ornate 
decoration  a  swift  flame  of  imaginative  impulse  such  as 
Blake  sent  into  the  world  without  such  covering.  He 
would  have  pleased  Blake  by  this  nervous  energy  and  by 
his  pure  bright  coloring,  despite  the  fact  that  he  signed 
himself  "Venetus."  He  painted  in  tempera  and  finished 
his  work  with  care  and  deliberation.  It  is  remarkable 
that  so  little  of  his  mental  fire  died  out  in  the  slow  pro- 
cess of  his  execution.  It  is  still  more  remarkable  that 
in  spite  of  his  reactionary  tendencies,  his  archaistic  use 
of  gold  and  relief  at  a  moment  when  all  great  artists 
were  renouncing  these,  he  is  intensely  modern  in  his 
sentiment.  He  seems  to  represent  a  phase  of  human 
development  at  which  we  in  America  have  but  recently 
arrived;  a  phase  in  which  appreciation  of  ancient  fin- 
ished forms  of  beauty  is  united  to  a  restless  eagerness 


92  ARTISTS   PAST  AND   PRESENT 

and  the  impulse  toward  exaggerated  self-expression. 
He  is  supposed  to  have  been  born  about  1440,  which 
would  make  him  a  contemporary  of  the  two  Bellini,  of 
Hans  Memling  and  of  Mantegna.  Had  he  only  been 
able  to  give  his  imagination  a  higher  range  —  had  he 
possessed  a  more  controlling  spiritual  ideal,  had  the 
touch  of  self-consciousness  that  rests  like  a  grimace  on 
the  otherwise  lovely  aspect  of  much  of  his  painting,  been 
eliminated,  he  would  have  stood  with  these  on  the  heights 
of  fifteenth  century  art.  We  are  fortunate  to  have  in 
America  the  Boston  Museum  Piethy  which  shows  him 
in  one  of  his  most  temperate  moods,  the  Pieta  of  Mr. 
Johnson's  collection,  which  is  the  emphatic  expression 
of  his  least  restrained  moments,  the  St.  George  of  Mrs. 
Gardiner's  collection,  in  which  his  grasp  of  knightly 
character  and  pictorial  grace  is  at  its  best,  and  these 
two  strongly  contrasted  types  of  the  Metropolitan  Mu- 
seum. 


In  the  SUdel  Gallery  at  Frankfort. 

A  Panel  by  Carlo  Crivelli  (b) 


REMBRANDT  AT  THE  CASSEL  GALLERY 


VII 

Rembrandt  at  the  Cassel  Gallery 

I  HE  art  gallery  of  Cassel  is  well  known  to  connois- 
seurs as  containing  a  group  of  Rembrandts  of  the 
first  order.  The  earliest  example  is  a  small  painting  of  a 
boy*s  head  supposed  to  be  a  portrait  of  the  artist  at  the  age 
of  twenty  or  one  and  twenty;  Dr.  Bode  considers  1628  too 
late  rather  than  too  early  as  the  probable  date,  and  the 
same  authority  warns  us  against  considering  such  studies 
in  the  light  of  serious  portraiture:  "It  had  never  occurred 
to  the  young  artist,"  he  says,  "to  make  a  dignified  portrait 
of  himself  at  the  time  when  he  painted  these  pictures." 
The  execution  is  clumsy,  the  color  is  dull  and  heavy  and 
of  the  brownish  tone  common  to  Rembrandt's  early  paint- 
ing, and  much  of  the  drawing  —  as  in  the  rings  of  hair 
escaping  to  the  surface  from  the  thick  curling  mass  — 
is  meaningless  and  indefinite,  but  the  distribution  of  light 
and  shade  is  not  unlike  that  of  Rembrandt's  later  work 
and  the  touch  has  a  certain  bold  freedom  that  seems  to 
have  been  his  from  the  first  whenever  he  served  as  his  own 
model,  even  while  his  handling  was  still  hard  and  prim 

95 


96  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

in  his  portraits  of  others.  Another  work  ascribed  to  his 
early  period,  about  1634,  is  the  "Man  with  a  Helmet," 
also  commonly  known  as  a  self-portrait,  fluent  in  execution 
and  vivacious  and  lifelike  in  expression,  yet  not  without 
that  hint  of  conscious  pose  common  with  the  artist  in  his 
endeavors  to  force  the  note  of  character.  The  blunt  strong 
features  are  strikingly  like  those  of  the  authenticated  por- 
traits of  the  artist,  but  Dr.  Karl  Voll,  Director  of  the  Alt 
Pinakothek  at  Munich,  declares  that  the  idea  of  a  **  self- 
portrait,"  attractive  as  it  is,  can  hardly  in  this  case  be 
upheld.  Whoever  the  sitter  may  have  been,  the  painting 
is  an  amazing  example  of  dexterity  of  hand  and  acute 
observation.  The  sharp  glitter  of  the  helmet,  the  contrast- 
ing flesh-like  quality  of  the  painting  in  the  face,  the  light 
vigorous  drawing  of  the  moustache  and  hair,  give  an 
impression  of  the  artist's  mastery  of  his  craft  hardly  to  be 
surpassed  at  any  period  of  his  life.  Far  less  poetic  in  its 
color-scheme  and  chiaro-oscuro  than  the  youthful  portrait 
belonging  to  Mrs.  Gardiner's  collection,  it  is  even  more 
eloquent  of  the  ease  with  which  he  managed  his  tools. 
Of  a  still  greater  charm,  with  subtler  problems  met  and 
solved,  is  the  portrait  of  Saskia  van  Ulenburgh,  whom 
he  married  in  Amsterdam  in  the  year  1634,  the  probable 
date  of  the  Cassel  portrait.  At  all  events  the  young 
woman  carries  in  her  hand  a  spray  of  rosemary,  the 
symbol  of  betrothal,  and  her  dress  has  the  richness  of  a 


REMBRANDT    AT    THE    CASSEL    GALLERY         97 

Dutch  bnde*s  equipment.  Here  we  see  Rembrandt's  art 
in  perhaps  its  most  delicate  and  psychologically  inter- 
esting phase.  The  character  revealed  by  the  small  pretty 
features  has  neither  extraordinary  force  nor  marked  in- 
dividuality. The  Hnes  are  neither  deep-cut  nor  broad. 
One  is  reminded  of  a  fine  little  etching  in  which  the  plate 
has  been  bitten  only  to  a  moderate  depth  and  which 
requires  a  sensitive  handling  in  the  printing  to  produce 
anything  like  richness.  Yet  the  result  is  rich  in  the  full- 
est sense  of  the  term.  It  depends  for  its  quality  not  only 
upon  the  splendid  color-scheme  formed  by  the  dark  red  of 
the  velvet  hat  and  gown,  the  white  of  the  feather,  the  gold 
and  gray  and  dull  blue  of  the  trimmings  and  ornaments, 
the  beautiful  jewels,  with  which  Rembanrdt  then  as  later 
produced  an  appearance  of  great  magnificence,  the  bright 
red-gold  of  the  hair  falling  lightly  over  the  softly  modeled 
brow,  and  the  fair  warm  tones  of  the  flesh  glowing  as  from 
living  health  and  physical  energy:  it  depends  as  much  upon 
the  deep  research  into  the  expression  that  has  resulted  in 
the  intimate  portraiture  possible  only  to  genius  and  sel- 
dom found  even  in  the  work  of  the  great  masters,  never, 
so  far  as  the  writer's  observation  has  gone,  in  the  work 
of  their  later  years.  The  smile  that  hesitates  at  the  corner 
of  the  whimsical  little  mouth,  the  tender  modulations  of 
surface  on  the  forehead  and  about  the  straight-gazing 
honest  eyes,  the  swift  suggestions  of  movement  and  play 


98  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

of  mood  in  the  flexible  contours,  the  gaiety  and  sweetness 
and  singular  purity  of  the  girlish  face,  are  evoked  with 
magisterial  authority  and  precision.  Never  surely  has 
there  been  a  finer  example  of  Dutch  care  and  thoroughness 
in  the  observation  and  rendering  of  minute  detail  united 
to  breadth  of  effect.  The  painting  of  the  jewels  and  em- 
broideries is  wrought  to  a  singularly  perfect  finish.  It 
is  almost  as  though  the  artist  had  set  himself  to  extract  the 
utmost  beauty  of  which  the  textures  of  stuffs  and  gems  are 
capable,  to  prove  how  much  more  enchanting  was  the 
beauty  of  the  brilliant  blond  demure  little  face  daintily 
poised  above  them.  Dr.  Bode  calls  the  picture  "one  of  the 
most  attractive,  not  only  of  his  early  pictures,  but  of  all 
his  works." 

To  Rembrandt's  early  years  also  are  ascribed  certain 
careful  studies  of  old  men's  heads  and  several  portraits 
of  younger  men.  Among  these  are  one  of  the  writing- 
master  Coppenol  and  one  of  the  poet  Krul,  the  former 
painted  in  1632,  the  latter  in  1633.  ^^^  ^"""^  portrait  is 
the  more  striking  of  the  two,  and  the  pictorial  costume 
with  the  broad  hat  casting  its  lucent  shadow  over  the  fine 
brow,  the  silken  jacket  with  its  gleaming  reflections  and 
the  wide  white  ruffles  at  neck  and  sleeve  on  which  the 
light  blazes  full,  adds  to  the  dignity  and  richness  of  the 
effect.  It  is  easy,  however,  to  agree  with  Dr.  Voll  in  rank- 
ing the  splendid  portrait  of  an  unknown  man,  of  some 


Courtesy  of  Berlin  Photographic  Company. 


Saskia 
From  a  portrait  by  Remhrandt 


REMBRANDT    AT    THE    CASSEL    GALLERY       99 

five  or  six  years  later  date,  far  above  the  Krul  portrait  in 
artistic  quality.  Although  excessively  warm  in  tone  it  has 
in  addition  to  excellent  construction  and  a  lifelike  aspect  a 
nobility  of  bearing  that  imposes  itself  directly  and  irre- 
sistibly upon  the  spectator. 

The  portrait  of  Coppenol  is  not  easily  analyzed  and  Dr. 
Bode  notes  that  the  likeness  to  the  authenticated  portraits 
of  the  famous  drawing  master  is  not  altogether  convincing. 
Simpler  and  homelier  in  appearance  than  the  portrait  of 
Krul,  this  solid  and  even  heavy  figure  seated  comfortably 
in  an  armchair,  the  well-drawn  hands  busy  with  mend- 
ing a  quill  pen,  the  glance  reflective,  but  hardly  thought- 
ful, the  mouth  under  the  small  fair  moustache  slightly 
indeterminate,  the  head  covered  with  short  hair,  the 
smooth  fat  face  three-quarters  in  light,  presents  at  first 
glance  a  commonplace  aspect  enough.  But  returning  to  it 
from  the  Krul  or  even  from  the  more  masterly  later  por- 
trait, the  spectator  is  certain  to  be  deeply  impressed  by 
the  quiet  yet  searching  execution  that  takes  account  of 
every  significant  change  in  plane  or  outline  in  the  large 
cheek  and  full  chin.  From  the  very  commonplace  of  the 
pose  and  type  one  gains  a  special  pleasure,  since  the  power 
of  the  artist  to  irradiate  an  ordinary  subject  is  the  more 
clearly  seen.  The  serene  light  enveloping  the  good  head 
and  falling  gently  on  the  background  brings  no  thought 
of  method  or  pigment  to  the  mind,  and  the  fleshlike  quality 


lOO  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

of  the  face  and  hands  is  as  near  imitation  of  reality  as  is 
possible  within  the  bounds  of  synthetic  art.  It  is  easy 
to  agree  with  Dr.  Bode's  opinion  that  the  homely  simple 
portraits  painted  in  ordinary  costume  and  under  ordinary 
conditions  of  light  during  Rembrandt's  first  three  years 
in  Amsterdam  are  intellectually  more  worth  while  than 
the  earlier  more  personal  works.  The  theory  is  that  he 
turned  them  out  in  competition  with  his  contemporaries 
and  eclipsed  them  on  their  own  ground. 

The  portrait  of  "Rembrandt's  Father  in  Indoor  Dress," 
of  the  preceding  year  (1631),  is  in  a  quite  different  man- 
ner, and  closely  resembles  the  painting  in  Boston  of  an  old 
man  with  downcast  eyes,  from  the  same  model.  The  bald 
head  and  scanty  beard,  the  wrinkled  face  and  slightly 
uncertain  mouth,  are  familiar  to  all  students  of  Rem- 
brandt's art.  In  1831  Rembrandt  was  still  in  his  father's 
house  and  one  gains  some  notion  of  the  old  miller's  amia- 
bility from  the  frequency  with  which  he  appeared  in 
etchings  and  paintings  and  the  variety  of  the  poses  which 
he  took  on  behalf  of  his  ardent  son,  adjusting  his  expres- 
sion to  his  assumed  character  with  no  little  dramatic  skill. 
Never  in  his  later  years  did  Rembrandt  so  delicately 
render  the  patience  and  discipline  of  age.  In  this  alert, 
unprepossessing  yet  kindly  face  we  can  read  a  not  too 
fanciful  history  of  the  temperament  of  the  sitter.  We 
see,  at  all  events,  the  mark  of  a  sympathetic  mind. 


REMBRANDT    AT    THE    CASSEL    GALLERY       loi 

The  next  picture  in  the  collection  to  mark  a  special 
period  and  one  of  brilliant  achievement  in  Rembrandt's 
career  is  the  so-called  "Woodcutter's  Family,"  belonging 
to  the  decade  between  1640  and  1650.  After  an  old 
fashion  the  Holy  Family  is  represented  as  seen  in  a  paint- 
ing before  which  a  curtain  is  partly  drawn.  The  mother 
sits  by  the  side  of  a  cradle  from  which  she  has  lifted  the 
child  who  clings  to  her  neck  while  she  presses  him  to  her 
in  a  close  embrace.  In  the  farther  corner  of  the  room  is 
the  figure  of  the  father  in  his  carpenter's  apron,  and  in  the 
center  a  cat  is  crouching  near  some  dishes  on  the  floor. 
The  room  is  filled  with  a  mild  sunlight  that  filters  through 
the  air  and  falls  across  the  figures  of  the  mother  and  child 
and  across  the  broad  expanse  of  floor.  The  simplicity  and 
poetic  feeling  in  lighting  and  gesture  are  worthy  of  Rem- 
brandt's prime,  and  there  is  no  trace  of  the  extreme  drama 
that  marks  the  religious  compositions  at  Munich.  The 
color  is  beautiful  and  the  tone  mysterious.  Nevertheless 
one  misses  the  precious  quality  of  the  earlier  craftmanship 
as  it  shines  in  such  lovely  paintings  as  the  "Saskia"  and 
the  "  Portrait  of  a  Young  Woman."  In  these  the  painter 
shows  that  he  was  still  young,  that  he  had  arrived  at  a  skill 
of  hand  that  permitted  him  to  use  his  medium  with  ease 
and  certainty,  but  that  he  had  not  yet  ceased  to  attempt 
what  lay  just  beyond  his  powers.  His  brush  still  sought  out 
subtle  refinements  of  modeling  with  the  patience  that  allied 


102  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

him  to  the  earlier  Dutch  and  Flemish  masters.  He  had,  no 
doubt,  the  instinctive  feehng  of  ardent  youth,  the  assump- 
tion of  time  ahead  for  the  carrying  out  of  all  projects,  and 
his  brilliant  manipulations  of  his  pigment  showed  neither 
haste,  nor  as  yet  the  complete  confidence  that  leaves  untold 
the  detail  of  the  story  for  the  imagination  of  the  audience 
to  supply.  He  was  not  ready  to  sacrifice  everything  else  to 
that  light  and  atmosphere  of  which  he  made  his  own  world 
in  his  later  years.  Characteristic  of  his  most  winning  use 
of  this  light  that  he  created  for  his  own  purposes  is  the 
portrait  of  Nicholas  Bruyningh,  Secretary  of  one  of  the 
divisions  of  the  Courts  of  Justice  at  Amsterdam :  one  of 
the  most  salient  and  brilliant  of  the  Rembrandts  in  the 
Cassel  Gallery.  This  portrait  belongs  to  the  year  1652 
when  the  artist  was  about  forty-five  years  old,  and  it  is  a 
superb  example  of  matured  genius.  The  subject  offered 
an  opportunity  for  daring  handling  and  pictorial  arrange- 
ment upon  which  Rembrandt  seized  with  a  full  under- 
standing of  its  possibilities.  The  beautiful  gay  face  with 
its  suggestion  of  irresponsibility  glows  from  a  mist  of 
atmosphere  that  veils  all  minor  detail,  leaving  in  strong 
relief  the  mass  of  curling  hair,  the  smiling  dark  eyes,  the 
smiling  mouth  unconcealed  by  the  slight  moustache,  the 
firmly  modeled  nose  and  pliant  chin,  with  the  tasseled 
collar  below  catching  the  point  of  highest  light.  It  is  the 
poetry  of  good  humor,  of  physical  beauty,  of  content  with 


Counesy  of  Berlin  Photographic  Company. 

Nicholas  Bruyningh 
From  a  portrait  by  Rembrandt 


In  the  Cassel  Museum. 


REMBRANDT    AT    THE    CASSEL    GALLERY        103 

life  and  life's  adventures.  It  also  marks  what  Herr 
Knackfuss  calls  Rembrandt's  "softer  manner"  in  which 
all  sharp  outlines  of  objects  are  effaced,  and  the  lights 
gleam  from  a  general  darkness.  More  than  "The  Senti- 
nel," which  sometimes  is  given  as  the  starting  point  for  this 
departure  in  style,  it  has  the  appearance  of  a  dramatic 
emergence  from  shadow.  From  having  been  a  painstaking 
craftsman  Rembrandt  at  this  time  had  become  a  dramatist 
selecting  from  his  material  those  elements  best  adapted  to 
sway  the  emotions.  He  has  lost  himself —  or  found  himself 
—  in  the  expression  of  character;  not  merely  character  as 
one  element  in  a  picture's  interest,  but  character  as  the 
element.  In  this  picture  of  Nicholas  Bruyningh  we  cannot 
escape  from  the  merry  careless  temperament.  We  can- 
not as  in  the  early  portrait  of  Saskia  linger  in  dalliance 
over  charming  accessories  and  beautifully  discriminated 
textures  until  we  reach  by  moderate  degrees  the  eloquence 
of  the  profoundly  studied  face.  Bruyningh's  face  is  like 
the  ''tirade"  of  a  French  play — it  is  rendered  at  white  heat 
and  in  one  inconceivably  long  breath.  Its  significance  is 
so  intensified  as  to  produce  a  profound  feeling  in  a  sym- 
pathetic spectator. 

If  we  compare  it  with  the  badly  named  "Laughing 
Cavalier"  of  Franz  Hals  we  see  clearly  enough  the  differ- 
ence between  drama  and  realism.  Drama  as  defined  by 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson  consists  not  of  incident  but  of 


104  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

passion  that  must  progressively  increase  in  order  that  the 
actor  may  be  able  to  "  carry  the  audience  from  a  lower  to 
a  higher  pitch  of  interest  and  emotion."  This  also  defines 
Rembrandt's  painting  at  all  periods.  As  one  approaches 
the  human  face  in  his  pictures  one  becomes  aware  of  an 
emotional  quality  that  is  irresistible,  and  in  a  portrait  like 
that  of  Bruyningh  the  emotional  quality  is  almost  isolated 
from  incident  or  detail.  It  is  the  great  moment  of  the  third 
act  when  the  audience  holds  its  breath. 

"The  Standard  Bearer"  is  not  accepted  by  Dr.  Bode 
as  a  fine  work  or  even  as  certainly  original,  the  version  of 
the  same  subject  in  Baron  G.  du  Rothschild's  collection 
having  made  much  deeper  an  impression  upon  him.  The 
Cassel  version  is  nevertheless  a  work  of  great  distinction, 
the  grave  and  beautiful  face  and  shining  armor  looking 
out  of  a  luminous  atmosphere  that  has  more  of  the 
Rembrandtesque  quality  than  many  authenticated  works 
of  Rembrandt's  riper  period.  The  work  is  engaging, 
personal,  striking,  and  if  not  entirely  great  certainly  pos- 
sessed of  many  of  the  quahties  of  greatness. 

While  the  Cassel  collection  does  not  contain  any  of  the 
superb  self  portraits  of  Rembrandt's  later  years,  the  one 
example  in  this  kind  having  authority  without  great  in- 
terest, it  does  include  one  biblical  picture  of  unusual 
importance  belonging  to  the  year  1656,  the  "Jacob  Bless- 
ing his  Grandchildren,"  which  is,  however,  unfinished. 


REMBRANDT    AT    THE    CASSEL    GALLERY        105 

The  square,  direct  brush  strokes  suggest  those  of  Hals, 
the  drapery  is  thinly  painted  with  a  flowing  medium,  the 
black  shadows  on  the  face  of  Jacob  cut  sharply  into  the 
half  tones,  there  is  little  discrimination  in  the  textures 
and  the  background  comes  forward.  But  the  faces  of 
the  children  are  charming  in  characterization,  recalling 
the  simple  tenderness  of  the  "Girl  Leaning  Out  of  the 
Window  "  at  Dulwich,  one  of  the  most  enchanting  em- 
bodiments of  youth  ever  achieved  by  Rembrandt,  and 
the  woman,  Israelitish  in  type,  with  large  eyes  and  fea- 
tures rather  abruptly  defined,  is  an  attractive  attempt  to 
realize  feminine  beauty,  a  task  in  which  Rembrandt  was 
never  dexterous,  however. 

Of  the  two  landscapes,  that  with  the  ruined  castle 
is  the  most  impressive,  but  neither  compares  favorably 
with  the  dainty  perfection  of  the  landscape  etchings. 

If  we  add  to  these  examples  the  studies  of  old  men's 
heads  and  the  delightful  portrait  of  the  artist's  sister 
holding  a  pink  in  her  hand,  we  realize  that  the  group  as 
a  whole  covers  many  phases  of  Rembrandt's  constantly 
changing  inspiration.  He  betrayed  in  his  later  works 
the  impatience  of  those  to  whom  few  years  are  left  in 
which  to  complete  their  accomplishment,  but  he  kept 
the  sensitiveness  of  his  youth  well  into  his  brief  prime, 
although  he  transferred  it  from  the  field  of  form  to  that 
of  light.     It   betrays  itself  in  the  quality  of  that  light 


I06  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

which  absorbs  all  that  is  ugly,  coarse,  or  ultra  real  in 
its  poetizing  glamour.  From  the  tender  explicit  crafts- 
manship of  the  wonderful  Saskia  to  the  golden  mist 
enveloping  the  figure  of  Nicholas  Bruyningh,is  a  long  step, 
but  not  longer  than  many  a  painter  has  taken  in  his 
progress  from  youth  to  maturity.  The  special  comment 
upon  Rembrandt's  character  as  a  painter  which  we  are 
able  to  gather  from  the  Cassel  pictures  is  that  in  cast- 
ing off  the  trammels  of  particularity  he  did  not  become 
less  receptive  to  poetic  influences.  He  grew  more  and 
more  a  dreamer,  and  in  losing  the  clear  objective  man- 
ner of  his  early  portraits  he  substituted  not  the  idle 
carelessness  which  in  the  work  of  a  painter's  later  years 
is  apt  to  be  condoned  as  freedom,  but  the  generaliza- 
tion that  excludes  vulgarities  of  execution  and  makes 
necessary  increased  mastery  of  the  difficult  craft  of 
painting. 


FANTIN-LATOUR 


VIII 

Fantin-Latour 

rj^ANTIN  -  LATOUR  was  born  in  1836,  was  the  son 
-*-  of  a  painter,  and  was  educated  at  Paris  under  his 
father's  guidance  and  that  of  Lecoq  and  Boisbaudeau, 
professor  at  a  Httle  art  school  connected  with  the  Ecole  des 
Beaux-Arts.  One  of  the  most  interesting  painters  of  the 
little  group  in  France  whose  work  began  to  come  before 
the  public  about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
a  close  friend  of  Whistler,  a  passionate  admirer  of  Dela- 
croix, and  an  inspired  student  of  the  old  masters,  he 
managed  to  preserve  intact  an  individuality  that  has  a 
singular  richness  and  simplicity  seen  against  the  many- 
colored  tapestry  of  nineteenth-century  art.  Rubens, 
Velasquez,  Rembrandt,  Franz  Hals,  and  Nicolaas  Maas, 
Pieter  de  Hooch  and  Vermeer  of  Delft,  Watteau  and 
Chardin,  Van  Dyck,  Titian,  Tintoret,  and  Veronese  were 
his  true  masters  and  his  copies  of  their  works  are  said 
by  his  enlightened  critic,  M.  Arsene  Alexandre,  to  have  a 
masterly  quality  of  their  own,  to  be  far  removed  from  the 

conventionality  of  facsimiles,  and  to  bear  upon  an  under- 

109 


no  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

lying  fidelity  of  transcription  an  impress  of  individual 
sentiment.  He  sought  to  be  faithful  to  the  originals  beyond 
external  imitation,  by  seeking  to  render  the  original  tone 
of  the  painting  in  its  first  freshness,  as  it  appeared  before 
time  and  varnish  had  yellowed  and  darkened  it.  He  thus 
made  himself  familiar  with  the  technical  methods  of  the 
great  periods  of  painting,  and,  coming  into  his  inheritance 
of  modern  ideas  and  ideals,  he  was  able  to  achieve  a 
beauty  of  execution  much  too  rarely  sought  by  his  con- 
temporaries, although  his  intimate  companions  like  him- 
self frequented  the  Louvre  with  a  considerable  assiduity, 
spending  upon  the  old  masters  the  enthusiasm  which  they 
withheld  from  the  later  academic  school  of  painting. 

His  earlier  subjects  were  largely  Biblical  and  historical. 
He  then  passed  to  domestic  scenes  and  in  1859,  1861,  and 
1863  was  painting  his  pictures  of  Les  Liseurs  and  Les  Bro- 
deuses  which  showed  the  charming  face  of  his  sister  with 
her  sensitive  smiling  mouth  and  softly  modeled  brows, 
and  later  that  of  his  wife.  At  the  Salon  of  1859  he  and 
Whistler  both  submitted  subjects  drawn  from  family  life, 
Whistler  his  At  the  Piano  with  his  own  sister  and  his  niece, 
little  Annie  Haden,  for  the  models,  and  Fantin  his  painting 
of  young  women  embroidering  and  reading,  only  to  have 
their  canvases  refused.  Fantin  was  not,  however,  a 
martyr  to  his  predilections  in  art.  He  early  obtained 
admission  to  the  Salon  although  he  had  enough  rejected 


FANTIN  -  LATOUR  III 

work  to  permit  him  to  appear  among  the  painters  exhibiting 
in  the  famous  little  "Salon  des  Refuses"  of  1863.  He 
received  medals  and  official  recognitions.  But  his  modesty 
of  taste  led  him  to  hold  himself  somewhat  apart  and  ex- 
clusive among  those  who  shared  his  Hkings.  His  portrait 
of  himself,  painted  in  1858,  shows  a  dreamy  young  man 
with  serious,  almost  solemn,  eyes,  sitting  before  his  easel, 
and  looking  into  the  distance  with  the  expression  of  one 
who  sees  visions. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  he  did  see  visions  and  attempted 
to  fix  them  with  his  art.  An  ardent  lover  of  music,  he  was 
eager  to  translate  the  emotions  aroused  by  it  into  the 
terms  of  his  own  art.  As  early  as  1859  he  was  in  England, 
to  which  he  returned  in  1861  and  1864,  and  while  there 
he  was  surrounded  by  a  group  of  people  who  shared  his 
enthusiasm  for  German  music.  There  he  first  became 
familiar  with  Schumann's  melodies,  and  made  the  rare 
little  etching  representing  his  English  friends,  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Edwards,  playing  one  of  Schumann's  compositions, 
Edwards  with  his  flute  and  Mrs.  Edwards  at  the  piano. 
In  1862  he  had  the  very  tempered  satisfaction  of  finding 
that  Wagner,  already  beloved  by  him,  had  reached  the 
public  taste  through  the  labors  of  the  courageous  Pasde- 
loup.  "I  always  regret,"  he  wrote  to  Edwards,  "seeing 
the  objects  of  my  adoration  adored  by  others,  especially 
by  the  masses.    I  am  very  jealous  when  I  love." 


112  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

In  order  to  celebrate  Wagner's  triumph  over  these 
masses,  however,  he  at  once  made  the  Hthograph  called 
Venushergy  from  which  sprang  the  very  different  oil  version 
of  the  same  subject  which  together  with  the  Hommage  a 
Delacroixy  the  story  of  which  M.  Benedite  has  recounted, 
was  admitted  to  the  Salon  of  1864.  Fantin's  Hthographs, 
a  number  of  which  are  in  the  print  room  of  the  Lenox 
Library  building  in  New  York  City,  show  clearly  his  pre- 
occupation with  music,  and  an  interesting  article  on  this 
phase  of  his  temperament  appeared  in  the  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondesy  September  15,  1906.  Naturally  a  worshiper, 
he  did  not  confine  himself  to  commemorating  only  the 
musicians  who  were  his  favorites.  In  lithography  and 
painting  he  exalted  such  diverse  heroes  of  the  different 
arts  as  Stendhal,  Hugo,  Baudelaire,  Delacroix,  Manet, 
Schumann,  Weber,  Berlioz,  and  Wagner.  In  1877  his 
enthusiasm  for  Wagner  revived  in  his  work,  and  composi- 
tions based  on  the  Ring  music  followed  each  other  in 
rapid  succession.  Wolfram  gazing  at  the  evening  star,  or 
following  with  enchanted  eyes  Elizabeth's  ghostly  figure 
as  it  moves  slowly  up  the  hill  toward  the  towers  of  Wart- 
burg;  the  Rhine  maidens  playing  with  rhythmic  motions 
in  the  swirling  waters,  with  Alberic,  crouched  in  the  fore- 
ground, watching  them;  Sieglinde,  giving  Siegmund  to 
drink,  as  hounded  and  pursued  he  sinks  at  the  door  of 
Hunding's  dwelling;  the  evocation  of  Kundry  by  Klingner; 


In  the  Brooklyn  Art  Museum. 


Portrait  of  Mme.  Maitre 

From   a  patnttng  hy  Fanttn-Latour 


FANTIN  -  LATOUR  1 1 3 

Siegfried  blowing  his  horn  and  receding  from  the  entice- 
ments of  the  Rhine  maidens  —  these  are  among  the  sub- 
jects that  engaged  him.  It  would  be  difficult  to  describe 
his  manner  of  interpretation.  Quite  without  theatrical 
suggestion,  it  combines  a  dramatic  use  of  dark  and  light 
and  a  feeling  for  palpable  atmosphere  hardly  equaled 
by  Rembrandt  himself,  with  a  remarkably  certain  touch. 
Nothing  could  better  emphasize  the  value  of  technical 
drill  to  a  poetic  temperament  than  these  imaginative 
drawings.  In  them  Fantin  gives  full  rein  to  his  emotional 
delight  in  tender  visions  and  twilight  dreams.  The 
lovely  rhythm  of  his  lines,  the  rise  and  fall  of  his  sensitive 
shadows  and  lights  that  play  and  interplay  in  as  strict 
obedience  to  law  as  the  waves  of  the  sea,  his  delicate 
modeling  by  which  he  brings  form  out  of  nebulous 
half-tones  with  the  slightest  touches,  the  least  dis- 
cernible accents,  the  accurate  bland  drawing,  the  or- 
dered composition,  the  subtle  spacing,  the  innumerable 
indications  of  close  observation  of  life  —  all  these  quali- 
ties combine  to  give  an  impression  of  fantasy  and  reality 
so  welded  and  fused  as  to  be  indistinguishable  to  the 
casual  glance. 

In  spite  of  the  assiduous  study  of  Dutch  and  Italian 
masters,  Fantin's  work  is  characteristically  French  in 
both  its  fantasy  and  its  realism.  Not  only  the  grace  of  the 
forms  and  the  elegance  of  the  gestures,  but  the  sentiment 


114  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

of  the  composition  and  the  quality  of  the  color,  are  un- 
disguisedly  Gallic.  He  is  closer  to  Watteau  than  to  any 
other  painter  but  his  firmer  technic  and  more  patient 
temperament  give  him  an  advantage  over  the  feverish 
master  of  eighteenth-century  idyls.  His  art  throbs  with 
a  fuller  life  and  in  his  airiest  dreams  his  world  is  made  of 
a  more  solid  substance.  For  melancholy  he  offers  serenity, 
for  daintiness  he  offers  delicacy. 

His  technique,  especially  in  his  later  work,  is  quite 
individual  in  its  character.  He  models  with  short  swift 
strokes  of  the  brush  —  not  unlike  the  brush  work  in  some 
of  Manet's  pictures.  His  pigment  is  rather  dry  and  often 
almost  crumbly  in  texture,  but  his  values  are  so  carefully 
considered  that  this  delicately  ruffled  surface  has  the  effect 
of  casting  a  penumbra  about  the  individual  forms,  of 
causing  them  to  swim  in  a  thickened  but  fluent  atmos- 
phere, instead  of  suggesting  the  rugosity  of  an  ill-managed 
medium. 

In  his  paintings  of  flowers  he  found  the  best  possible 
expression  for  his  subtle  color  sense.  The  letters  written 
to  him  by  Whistler  in  the  sixties  show  how  fervently  these 
paintings  were  admired  by  the  American  master  of 
harmony,  and  also  how  much  good  criticism  came  to  him 
from  his  comrade  whose  enthusiasm  for  Japanese  art 
already  was  fully  awakened. 

As  a  portraitist,  Fantin  was  peculiarly  fortunate.    His 


FANTIN  -  LATOUR  115 

exquisitely  painted  flower  studies,  his  pearly-toned  beauti- 
fully drawn  nudes,  his  lithographs  with  their  soft  darks 
and  tender  manipulations  of  line,  his  ambitious  imagi- 
native compositions,  are  none  of  them  so  eloquent  of  his 
personality  as  his  portraits  with  their  absolute  integrity, 
their  fine  divination,  and  their  fluent  technique.  The 
portrait  which  we  reproduce  is  of  Madam  Maitre,  was 
painted  in  1882,  and  was  acquired  by  the  Museum  of  the 
Brooklyn  Institute  of  Arts  and  Sciences  in  1906.  It  repre- 
sents a  woman  of  middle  years  with  a  sincere  and  thought- 
ful face  and  a  quiet  bearing.  The  feHcities  of  Fantin's 
brush  are  seen  in  the  way  in  which  the  silk  sleeve  follows 
the  curve  of  the  round  firm  arm,  and  the  soft  lace  of  the 
bodice  rests  against  the  throat  and  is  relieved  almost 
without  contrast  of  color  against  the  white  skin.  The 
touches  of  pure  pale  blue  in  the  fan  and  the  delicate  tints 
of  the  rose  are  manifestations  of  the  artist's  restrained 
and  subtle  management  of  color,  but  above  all  there  is  a 
perfectly  unassuming  yet  uncompromising  rendering  of 
character.  There  is  nothing  in  the  plain  refined  features 
that  cries  out  for  recognition  of  a  temperament  astutely 
divined.  They  have  the  calm  repose  that  indicates  entire 
lack  of  self-consciousness,  no  quality  is  unduly  insisted 
upon,  there  is  neither  sentimentality  nor  brutal  realism 
in  the  handling,  the  sitter  simply  lives  as  naturally  upon 
the  canvas  as  we  feel  that  she  must  have  lived  in  the  world. 


Il6  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

It  is  for  such  sweet  and  logical  truth-telling,  such  mild  and 
strict  interpretation,  that  we  must  pay  our  debt  of  appre- 
ciation to  Fantin,  the  painter  of  ideal  realities  and  of 
actual  ideals. 


CARL  LARSSON 


IX 

Carl  Lars  son 

'  I  ^HE  accomplished  Swedish  critic,  Georg  Nord- 
ensvan,  opens  his  monograph  on  Carl  Larsson 
with  the  statement  that  the  latter  is  unquestionably  the 
most  popular  artist  of  the  present  day  in  his  own  coun- 
try, and  that  he  is  equally  popular  as  a  man.  It  is  not 
often  that  the  personality  of  an  artist  seems  so  essentially 
connected  with  his  work  as  in  Larsson's  case.  His  gay, 
pugnacious,  independent,  yet  amiable  temper  of  mind 
is  so  directly  reflected  in  the  character  of  his  various  pro- 
duction as  to  make  a  consideration  of  the  two  together 
an  almost  necessary  prelude  to  any  account  of  him.  He 
has  insisted  upon  expressing  his  individuality  at  what- 
ever cost  of  traditional  and  conventional  technique  and 
he  has  at  the  same  time  unconsciously  represented  the 
frankest,  most  wholesome,  and,  on  the  whole,  most 
characteristic  side  of  the  Swedish  character.  A  rather 
daring  and  flippant  humor  enters  into  his  paintings. 
One  of  his  portraits  of  himself  shows  him  standing,  his 

happy  reddish    face   aglow,   against   a   yellowish-brown 

119 


120  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

wall.  He  is  dressed  in  a  long,  yellowish-brown  smoking 
frock,  and  holds  in  his  raised  hand  a  pencil  from  which 
appears  to  spring  a  little  feminine  figure  supposed  to 
represent  his  genius.  "This  figure  carries  what  looks 
like  a  quantity  of  small  round  cookies,"  says  his  critic, 
"possibly  to  symbolize  the  adequacy  with  which  his 
genius  provides  for  his  nourishment." 

Another  shows  him  with  his  little  girl  sitting  on  his 
head,  maintaining  her  equilibrium  by  planting  stout 
feet  on  his  shoulders.  The  painter  wears  a  house-jacket, 
loose  slippers  and  baggy  trousers,  his  face  beams  with 
good-humor;  the  child  is  brimming  with  laughter; 
the  little  scene  is  instinctive  with  the  spirit  of  intimate 
domesticity,  and  the  drawing,  free  and  easy,  without 
apparent  effort  in  the  direction  of  elegant  arrangement 
or  expressiveness  of  line,  is  nevertheless  singularly  ner- 
vous and  vigorous. 

In  still  another  portrait,  he  is  sitting  before  his  easel, 
his  little  girl  on  one  knee,  his  canvas  on  the  other  with 
the  easel  serving  only  as  a  prop.  His  eyes  are  turned 
toward  a  mirror  which  is  outside  the  picture  and  the 
reflection  in  which  he  is  using  as  a  model;  the  child's 
eyes  are  fixed  on  the  canvas  watching  the  growth  of  the 
design.  These  are  "self-portraits"  in  more  than  the 
usual  sense.  It  is  the  rarest  thing  in  art  to  find  a  painter 
representing  his  own  aspect  with  such  complete  lack  of 


My  Family 

From  a  painting  by  Carl  Larsson 


CARL  LARSSON  121 

self-consciousness.  No  characteristics  seem  especially  to 
be  emphasized,  none  betray  exaggeration,  there  appar- 
ently is  neither  distortion  nor  idealization,  nor  is  there 
any  attempt  to  select  a  mood  that  shall  preserve  a  favor- 
able impression  of  the  sitter.  Nothing  could,  hov(rever, 
more  favorably  present  a  character  to  the  critical  scru- 
tiny of  strangers  than  this  superb  good  faith.  The  least 
sentimental  of  us  must  recognize  with  frank  delight  the 
wholesome  sweetness  of  the  world  these  kindly  faithful 
records  open  to  us. 

Larsson  was  born  at  Stockholm  in  1853.  From  the 
age  of  thirteen  he  depended  upon  his  own  labors  for 
support;  retouching  photographs  at  first.  Later  he  en- 
tered the  elementary  school  of  the  academy  where  he 
received  honors.  He  drew  from  the  antique  and  from 
the  model  and  began  to  make  drawings  for  illustration 
when  he  was  about  eighteen.  The  public  knew  him 
first  through  his  drawings  for  the  comic  paper  called 
Kaspevy  and  he  shortly  became  a  much  sought  after 
illustrator  for  papers  and  books.  The  first  book  illus- 
trated by  him  was  a  collection  of  stories  by  Richard 
Gustafsson,  the  editor  of  Kasper,  the  next  was  Ander- 
son's "Tales."  In  the  latter  he  succeeded  Isidor  Torn- 
blom,  who  died  in  1876  after  having  executed  only  a 
few  drawings  for  the  first  part.  He  became  bold  and 
rapid  in  improvisation,  and  light  and  easy  in  execution 


122  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

—  qualities  that  he  never  lost.  He  was  obliged  to  make 
of  his  academic  studies  a  side  issue,  bread-winning  tak- 
ing necessarily  the  first  place  with  him.  No  doubt  it  is 
to  this  necessity  that  he  owes  that  prompt  adaptation  of 
his  facility  to  various  uses,  that  practical  application  of 
his  freshly  acquired  knowledge  which  give  to  the  simple 
compositions  of  his  earlier  period  an  especial  spontaneity. 
He  had  no  time  to  fix  himself  in  ruts  of  practice.  To 
draw  from  the  Antinous  one  day  and  the  next  to  press 
one's  Greek  outline  into  service  for  the  representation 
of  little  dancing  girls  and  happy  babies  is  to  effect  that 
union  between  art  and  life  which  makes  the  first  moving 
and  the  second  beautiful;  the  union  in  which  Daumier 
found  the  source  of  his  prodigious  strength.  In  his 
early  years  Larsson  was  anything  but  a  realist.  His 
fancy  turned  to  unusual  and  vast  subjects,  and  his  nat- 
ural impatience  caused  him  to  launch  himself  upon  them 
with  very  inadequate  preliminary  study.  The  first  canvas 
attempted  by  him  during  the  study-time  in  Paris  (time 
which  he  won  at  the  Academy)  was  nearly  ten  feet  high 
and  represented  a  scene  from  the  deluge  with  figures 
double  life  size.  Naturally,  he  found  himself  unable 
to  cope  with  the  difficulties  that  promptly  arose  and  was 
obliged  to  give  it  up.  In  1877,  when  he  was  twenty- 
four  years  old,  he  painted  a  three-quarter  length  por- 
trait of  a  woman  standing,  which  was  his  best  work  of 


CARL  LARSSON  123 

that  period.  The  genre  pictures  which  he  sent  home 
to  Stockholm  at  about  the  same  time  awakened  little 
enthusiasm  and  spread  the  impression  that  he  had  no 
future  as  a  painter  and  would  be  obliged  to  content  him- 
self with  illustration.  As  an  illustrator  he  became  thor- 
oughly^ successful,  turning  out  a  large  amount  of  work 
and  gaining  for  himself  in  Stockholn)  the  very  inappro- 
priate name  of  "the  Swedish  Dore."  He  made  enough 
money  in  this  branch  of  art  to  try  painting  again  in  Paris, 
but  with  almost  no  success  until  the  Spring  of  1883,  when 
he  exhibited  at  the  Salon  a  couple  of  small  water-colors, 
the  subjects  taken  from  the  field  and  garden  life  of  Grez, 
a  little  painting  village  that  lies  south  of  the  Fontaine- 
bleau  forest.  These  pictures  won  a  medal  and  were 
bought  in  Gothenburg!  Other  similar  subjects  followed, 
all  distinguished,  Nordensvan  affirms,  by  the  same  pleas- 
ing delicacy  of  handling,  the  same  glow  and  splendor  of 
sunlight,  and  the  same  glad  color-harmony.  He  now 
was  in  a  position  to  marry,  and  pictures  of  family  life 
presently  appeared  in  great  numbers.  These  are  alto- 
gether charming  —  spirited,  vivid,  original,  and  full  of 
an  indescribable  freshness  and  heartiness.  Sometimes 
he  painted  his  young  wife  holding  her  baby,  sometimes 
he  painted  his  two  boys  parading  as  mimic  soldiers; 
sometimes  it  was  his  little  girl  hiding  under  the  great, 
handsome    dining-table;  or    a    young   people's    party    in 


124  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

the  characteristic  dining-room,  all  the  furniture  and  deco- 
rations of  which  are  reproduced  with  crisp  naturahsm. 

Not  the  least  charm  of  his  paintings  Hes  in  the  beauty 
of  these  handsome  interiors  in  which  detail  has  the  pre- 
cise definition  found  in  the  work  of  the  old  Dutch  ar- 
tists. While  Larsson's  technique  lacks  the  exquisite 
finish  of  a  Terborch  or  Vermeer  of  Delft  he  tells  almost 
as  many  truths  about  a  house  and  its  occupants  as  they 
do.  If  we  consider,  for  example,  the  charming  compo- 
sition which  he  calls  "The  Sluggard's  Melancholy  Break- 
fast" ("Sjusofverskans  dystra  frukost")  we  find  worthy 
of  note  not  only  the  pensive  and  rather  cross  little  girl 
sitting  alone  at  the  table  with  her  loaf  of  bread  and  cup 
of  milk,  but  also  the  long  tablecloth  with  its  handsome 
conventional  design,  obviously  a  bit  of  artistic  handi- 
craft since  it  is  signed  and  dated  above  the  fringe  at  one 
end,  the  decoration  on  the  wall,  possibly  the  lower  part 
of  a  painted  window,  with  its  significant  motto  "Arte  et 
Probitate";  the  graceful  pattern  of  the  chairs,  the  big 
pitcher  full  of  flowers  and  fruits,  the  plain  ample  dishes, 
the  polished  floor  of  the  passage-way  at  the  end  of  which 
a  door  opens  on  the  green  fields  with  a  child's  figure 
half-seen  standing  on  the  threshold,  the  fine  rich  color 
harmony  of  greens  and  reds  and  blues  and  browns  held 
together  by  a  subtlety  of  tone  that  involves  no  loss  of 
strength. 


CARL  LARSSON  125 

His  outdoor  scenes  are  hardly  less  personal  in  their 
portraiture.  There  is  the  one  called  "Apple-Bloom" 
with  a  Larsson  child  in  a  pink  sunbonnet  clinging  to  the 
slim  stem  of  a  young  apple-tree;  in  the  distance  some 
long  low  red  buildings  behind  a  board  fence,  in  the  fore- 
ground the  pale  green  of  spring  grass;  there  is  the  one 
in  which  the  larger  part  of  the  picture  is  filled  with  deli- 
cate field  growth,  thin  sprays  of  pink,  blue  and  white 
blossoms,  and  long  slender  leaves,  at  the  top  of  the  can- 
vas a  little  thicket  of  trees  with  a  small  bright  head  peering 
between  the  branches;  there  is  the  one  in  which  a  baby 
lies  on  the  greensward  under  the  trees;  each  has  an  in- 
describable charm  of  individuality.  Doubtless  resembling 
a  hundred  other  groves  or  meadows,  these  have  an  ex- 
pression of  their  own  distinguishing  them  from  their 
kind.  It  is  the  genius  of  the  close  observer  for  discrim- 
ination between  like  things. 

Whatever  the  subject,  the  treatment  is  always  bril- 
liant, frank  and  joyous.  Larsson's  brushwork  is  light 
and  flowing;  he  has,  indeed,  a  certain  French  vivacity 
of  technique,  but  his  motives  and  his  personal  point  of 
view  are  so  purely  Scandinavian  as  to  leave  no  other 
impression  on  the  mind.  Nor  is  he  merely  the  painter 
of  the  Swedish  type.  He  is  the  painter  of  intimate  home 
life  and  character  as  found  within  his  own  walls.  Hardly 
any  other  family  in  Sweden  is  known  so  well  as  his,  and 


126  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

the  variety  and  enthusiasm  of  his  mind  lend  spontaneity 
to  these  domestic  pictures,  so  that  one  does  not  easily 
tire  of  the  strong  smiling  creatures  naturally  and  effec- 
tively presented  to  our  vision. 

In  the  field  of  mural  decoration  also  he  has  shown 
marked  originality.  Under  the  encouragement  of  Mr. 
Pontus  Furstenberg,  one  of  the  foremost  patrons  of  art 
in  Sweden,  he  tested  himself  on  a  series  of  paintings  for 
a  girl's  school  in  Gothenburg.  He  accomplished  his 
task  in  a  manner  entirely  his  own,  taking  for  his  sub- 
jects typical  figures  of  women  in  Sweden  at  different  pe- 
riods of  history  —  a  Viking's  widow;  the  holy  Brigitta; 
a  noble  house  mother  of  the  time  of  the  Vasas,  etc.  — 
but  although  his  manner  of  painting  was  free  and  blithe 
it  hardly  satisfied  the  most  severe  critics  on  account  of 
its  lack  of  architectonic  qualities  and  the  absence  in  it 
of  anything  like  monumental  simplicity.  He  has  con- 
tinued, however,  to  go  his  own  way  in  mural  decoration 
and  holds  to  the  principle  that  the  walls  should  look  flat 
and  that  the  harmony  of  color  and  line  should  be  bal- 
anced and  proportioned  with  regard  to  decorative  and 
not  to  realistic  effect.  His  subjects  are  apt  to  be  fanci- 
ful and  are  executed  in  a  semi-playful  spirit  not  in  the 
least  familiar  to  an  uninventive  age,  as  where  the  spirit 
of  the  Renaissance  is  represented  by  a  young  woman 
seated  high  on  a  step-ladder,  looking  toward  the  sky, 


A  Painting  by  Carl  Larsson 


CARL  LARSSON  127 

with  Popes  and  Cardinals  seated  on  the  rungs  below 
gazing  in  adoration,  while  underneath  them  all  yawns 
the  grave  filled  with  skeletons,  from  which  the  Renais- 
sance has  risen. 

On  the  subject  of  home  arts  and  handicrafts  Larsson 
has  emphatic  ideas  and  urges  on  his  compatriots  the 
desirability  of  preserving  their  national  types.  "Take 
care  of  your  true  self  while  time  is,"  he  says,  "again  be- 
come a  plain  and  worthy  people.  Be  clumsy  rather 
than  elegant:  dress  yourselves  in  furs,  skins,  and  woolens, 
make  yourselves  things  that  are  in  harmony  with  your 
heavy  bodies,  and  make  everything  in  bright  strong 
colors;  yes,  in  the  so-called  gaudy  peasant  colors  which 
are  needed  contrasts  to  your  deep  green  pine  for- 
ests and  cold  white  snow."  He  has  made  designs  for 
haute-lisse  weaving  which  were  executed  by  the  Handi- 
craft Guild  and  which  were  practically  open  air  paint- 
ing translated  into  the  Gobelin  weave.  In  all  that  he 
does  he  is  free  from  the  trammels  of  convention;  but  his 
chief  triumphs  are  in  a  field  that  is  sadly  neglected,  in 
modern  art.  As  a  painter  of  family  life  he  is  surpassed 
by  none  of  his  contemporaries. 


JAN  STEEN 


X 

Jan   Steen 

JAN  STEEN  was  born  in  Leyden  about  1626,  which 
would  make  him  nineteen  years  younger  than  Rem- 
brandt. He  is  said  to  have  studied  first  under  Nicolas 
Kniipfer  and  then  possibly  under  Adriaen  van  Ostade 
in  Harlem,  and  finally  under  Jan  van  Goyen  at  the 
Hague.  In  1648  he  was  enrolled  in  the  Painter's  Guild 
at  Leyden,  and  the  following  year  he  married  Marga- 
retha  van  Goyen,  the  daughter  of  his  latest  master.  His 
father  was  a  well-to-do  merchant  and  beer-brewer  and 
Steen  himself  at  one  time  ran  a  brewery,  though  appar- 
ently not  with  great  success.  He  incontestably  was 
famiHar  with  the  Hfe  of  drinking  places  and  houses  in 
which  rough  merrymaking  was  the  chief  business.  Many 
of  his  subjects  are  drawn  from  such  sources  and  his 
brush  brings  them  before  us  with  their  characteristic 
features  sharply  observed  and  emphasized.  He  has 
been  accused  of  a  moralizing  tendency  and  it  may  at 
least  be  said  that  he  permits  us  to  draw  our  own   moral 

from  perverted  and  unpolished  facts.     In  his  least  re- 

131 


132  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

strained  moments  he  is  a  kind  of  Dutch  Jordaens,  less 
exuberant,  less  sturdy  and  florid  and  gesticulatory;  but 
with  the  same  zest  for  living,  the  same  union  of  old  and 
young  in  any  festival  that  includes  good  meat  and  good 
drink  with  song  and  dance  and  horse-play.  If  we  com- 
pare "  Die  Lustige  Familie  "  at  Amsterdam  with  that  ebul- 
lient rendering  of  the  same  subject  by  Jordaens  entitled 
"Zoo  de  ouden  zongen:  Zoo  pypen  de  pngen*'  that  hangs 
in  the  Antwerp  Museum,  we  have  no  difficulty  in  per- 
ceiving the  points  of  similarity.  There  even  are  like- 
nesses in  the  color-schemes  of  the  two  painters,  Jordaen's 
silvery  yellows  for  once  meeting  their  match;  but  we  find 
in  Steen's  picture  a  more  subtle  discrimination  in  the 
characters  and  temperaments  lying  beneath  the  physical 
features  of  the  gay  company. 

Oftentimes  Steen  indulges  in  a  gay  and  harmless  badi- 
nage as  diflPerent  as  possible  from  the  bold  and  keen  irony 
of  his  wilder  themes.  In  "Die  Katzentanz  Stunde"  of 
the  Rijksmuseum  at  Amsterdam  the  laughing  children 
putting  the  wretched  little  cat  through  a  course  of  un- 
welcome instruction,  the  excited  pose  of  the  dog,  the 
concentration  of  the  girl  upon  her  dance-music,  are 
rendered  with  joyous  freedom  and  animation,  and  sug- 
gest a  childlike  mood.  The  lovely  Menagerie  of  the 
Hague  is  conceived  in  a  still  milder  and  gentler  temper, 
the  demure  child  among  her  pets,  feeding  her  lamb,  with 


JAN  STEEN  133 

her  doves  flying  about  her  head  and  the  faithful  Httle 
Steen  dog  in  the  background,  is  an  idylHc  figure.  In- 
deed the  entire  composition  has  a  tenderness  and  almost 
a  rehgious  depth  of  sentiment  that  make  it  unique  among 
the  painter's  achievements.  Another  charming  com- 
position in  which  homely  pleasures  enjoyed  with  modera- 
tion and  in  a  mood  of  simple  merriment  are  delicately 
depicted  is  "Der  Wirtshausgarten"  in  Berlin,  in  which 
the  young  people  and  their  elders  together  with  the 
happy  dog  are  having  a  quiet  meal  under  a  green  arbor. 
Family  pets  play  an  important  part  in  all  these  scenes 
of  domestic  life;  apparently  Jan  Steen  even  more  than 
other  Dutch  painters  was  interested  in  the  idiosyncrasies 
of  the  animals  about  him  and  was  amused  by  incidents 
including  them.  His  pictures  gain  by  this  a  certain 
suggestion  of  kindliness  and  community  of  good  feeling 
that  is  refreshing  in  the  midst  of  the  frequent  vulgarity 
of  theme  and  sentiment.  Reminiscences  of  the  exqui- 
site feehng  shown  in  " Die  Menagerie''  contxnudWy  oqcuv 
in  such  incidents  as  a  girl  feeding  her  parrot,  the  play  of 
children  with  the  friendly  dogs  and  cats  of  the  noisy  inn, 
and  especially  in  the  importance  given  to  the  expressions 
and  attitudes  of  the  dumb  creatures.  The  dog  is  nearly 
always  in  the  foreground,  invariably  characterized  with 
the  utmost  vivacity  and  clearness,  and  usually  playing 
his  cheerful  part  in  whatever  of  lively  occupation  his 


134  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

masters  are  engaged  in.  In  ''Die  Lustige  Famtlie"  he 
joins  his  voice  to  the  family  concert  with  an  expression 
of  canine  agony. 

Frequently  the  subjects  are  obviously  drawn  from  the 
life  of  his  own  family  circle  and  the  portraits  of  his  chil- 
dren in  these  canvases  are  always  sympathetic  and  de- 
lightful, giving  a  peculiarly  intimate  character  to  the 
artist's  works  in  this  kind.  In  "Das  Nikolausfest"  at 
Amsterdam  the  little  girl  in  the  foreground  —  apparently 
the  little  Elisabeth  born  in  1662,  who  figures  in  so  many 
of  the  later  paintings  —  is  a  particularly  engaging  figure. 

These  simpler  "feasts"  and  family  gatherings  in  which 
gay  laughter  reigns  in  place  of  brawling,  constitute  a 
delightful  phase  of  Steen's  art,  yet  curiously  they  are 
seldom  as  beautiful  in  their  esthetic  qualities  as  the 
tavern  scenes  and  incidents  of  low  and  vicious  life.  The 
picture  in  the  Louvre,  however,  "Das  Familien  Mahly" 
contradicts  this  generalization  in  the  sheer  loveliness  of 
color,  in  the  light  that  streams  through  the  window  hung 
with  vines,  and  in  the  delicately  discriminated  textures 
of  the  gowns  and  furnishings.  In  this  picture  the  figure 
of  the  woman  nursing  her  child  in  the  background  has 
an  amplitude  of  line  and  graciousness  of  pose  that  places 
it  on  a  plane  with  Millet's  renderings  of  similar  subjects, 
while  the  painting  in  itself  is  of  a  quality  never  achieved 
by  the  poetic  Frenchman. 


JAN  STEEN  135 

Occasionally  we  find  compositions  by  Steen  in  which 
only  two  or  three  figures  are  introduced,  although  as  a 
rule  he  crowds  every  inch  of  his  canvas  with  human  beings 
and  still-life.  A  very  beautiful  example  of  these  composi- 
tions is  seen  in  ^^Die  Musikstunde"  of  the  National  Gal- 
lery, London.  The  daintiness  and  innocence  of  the 
young  girl's  profile,  the  refinement  of  the  man's  face, 
and  the  enchanting  tones  of  the  yellow  bodice  and  blue 
skirt  make  of  this  picture  a  worthy  sequel  to  "Die 
Menagerie." 

Another  composition  of  two  figures  is  "Das  Trinker- 
paar"  in  the  Rijks  Museum  at  Amsterdam.  A  woman 
is  drinking  from  a  glass,  and  a  man  standing  at  one  side 
holds  a  jug  and  looks  at  her  with  an  expression  of  con- 
cern. The  painting  of  the  woman's  right  hand  which 
she  holds  to  her  breast  is  delightful  and  so  is  the  clear 
half-tone  of  her  face.  An  attractive  one-figure  composi- 
tion, also  in  the  Rijks  Museum,  is  "Die  Scheuermagdy* 
a  scullery  maid  scouring  a  metal  pitcher  on  the  top  of  a 
cask.  The  discriminations  of  texture  in  this  picture,  the 
wood  and  metal  surfaces,  the  cotton  of  the  woman's 
blouse,  the  rather  coarse  skin  of  her  bared  arms  and  the 
more  delicate  texture  of  her  full  throat,  are  especially 
noteworthy.  Several  compositions  in  which  two  or  three 
figures  are  grouped  are  variations  of  one  theme,  an  in- 
valid   visited    by    her    physician.     In    several    instances 


136  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

the  title,  the  rather  lackadaisical  expression  of  the  lady, 
and  the  significant  glances  of  her  companions,  indicate 
that  love-sickness  is  the  malady.  The  color  in  these 
pictures  is  usually  beautiful  and  the  types  are  cleverly 
differentiated,  the  entire  story  becoming  apparent  to  the 
spectator  by  particularities  of  gesture  and  feature, 
neither  exaggerated  nor  emphasized  unduly,  but  acutely 
observed  and  rendered  at  their  precise  value  in  the  ex- 
pressiveness of  the  whole.  A  very  fine  example  of  these 
'^ DoktorbiUer"  is  in  the  collection  of  the  New  York  His- 
torical Society.  The  doctor  is  bleeding  his  patient,  and 
there  are  several  people  in  the  room.  The  rich  costumes 
are  distinguished  by  the  indescribable  blond  yellows  and 
silvery  blues  that  make  Steen's  color  harmonies  at  their 
best  singularly  delicate  and  blithe. 

Among  the  compositions  in  which  many  figures  in  a 
complicated  environment  tax  the  artist's  technical  skill  to 
the  utmost,  are  several  representations  of  the  bean  feast, 
that  saturnalia  of  Germany,  upon  which  abundant  eat- 
ing and  drinking  are  in  order.  One  of  the  most  beautiful 
of  these  pictures  is  in  the  Cassel  Gallery.  Steen  himself, 
portly  and  flushed,  sits  at  the  table,  grimacing  good- 
naturedly  at  the  racket  assailing  his  ears.  His  hand- 
some wife  is  in  the  foreground,  her  large  free  gesture 
and  unrestrained  pose  bringing  out  the  opulent  beauty 
of  her  form  draped  in  shining  silken  stuffs.     Her  face, 


JAN  STEEN  137 

turned  toward  the  little  urchin  who  has  found  the  bean 
in  the  cake  and  thus  won  the  right  to  wear  a  paper  crown 
as  king  of  the  revels,  is  dimpled  with  smiles.  The  two 
children  are  babyish  in  figure  and  expression  and  the 
little  dog  is  more  serious  than  is  his  wont  upon  these 
occasions.  A  couple  of  men  are  making  a  din  with  bits 
of  brass  and  iron,  and  the  place  is  in  complete  disorder 
with  eggshells  and  kitchen  utensils  scattered  about  on 
the  floor,  yet  the  aspect  of  the  scene  is  curiously  removed 
from  vulgarity.  Both  beauty  and  character  have  been 
ideals  of  the  artist.  He  has  not  only  grasped  the  love- 
liness of  external  things  but  he  has  delved  rather  deeply 
into  the  individualities  of  these  roistering  Hollanders. 
You  do  not  feel  as  you  do  with  Jordaens  that  excess  of 
flesh  and  the  joys  of  the  palate  are  all  the  world  holds 
for  the  revelers.  The  world  holds,  for  one  thing,  appre- 
ciation of  rich  accessories.  The  columned  bedstead,  the 
handsome  rugs,  the  carved  furniture,  the  glint  of  gold 
in  the  ornate  picture  frame,  especially  the  sheen  of  the 
silk  skirts,  the  soft  thick  velvet  and  fur  of  the  sacques 
and  bodices,  these,  while  they  are  not  uncommon  in  the 
Dutch  interiors  of  the  period  combine  to  produce  an  im- 
pression of  esthetic  well-being  that  tempers  the  unctu- 
ous physical  satisfactions  of  a  merry-making  class.  With 
Jordaens  it  is  the  satyr  in  man  that  sets  the  standard  of 
enjoyment,  except  in  his  religious  pictures  which  often 


138  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

are  filled  with  genuine  and  noble  emotion,  and  in  which 
he  rises  superior  to  Steen  where  the  latter  works  in  the 
same  kind.  Nothing  could  be  more  commonplace  or 
characterless  in  color  and  form  than  Steen's  rendering 
of  the  dinner  at  Emmaus.  Occasionally,  however,  he 
is  equally  without  inspiration  in  his  lustiest  subjects. 
In  the  '^ Frohltche  Heimkehr"  at  Amsterdam,  a  merry 
enough  scene  of  people  returning  from  a  boatride  in 
high  spirits,  there  is  neither  charm  of  color  (save  in  the 
yellow  jacket  of  a  girl  who  leans  over  the  side  of  the  boat) 
nor  subtlety  of  characterization. 

Fully  to  appreciate  Steen,  we  should  know  his  pictures 
in  the  Louvre  and  at  Amsterdam.  They  cover  a  wide 
range  and  comprise  a  considerable  number  of  master- 
pieces. The  life  he  depicts  in  them  is  not  of  a  very  high 
order,  but  he  has  seen  the  possibilities  for  pictorial  rep- 
resentation in  his  surroundings  as  almost  no  other  painter 
of  his  time.  His  people  are  alive  and  their  living  is 
active  and  fervent.  What  they  do  they  do  with  zest. 
There  is  energy  in  the  painter's  line  and  vitality  in  his 
color.  Nothing  is  dull  or  tame  in  his  family  drama. 
All  has  a  touch  of  moving  beauty.  In  the  "Schlechte 
Gesellschaft"  of  the  Louvre  or  the  more  vulgar  "Nach 
dem  Gelage**  of  the  Rijks  Museum  —  least  rewarding  of 
pictures  for  the  moralist  —  how  rich  in  beauties  of  color 
and  line  is  the  composition,  how  tender  in  modeling  are 


JAN  STEEN  139 

the  forms,  how  bewitching  to  the  eye  the  fine  enamel  of 
the  surface! 

In  the  Metropolitan  Museum,  in  New  York,  is  one 
characteristic  example:  "The  old  rat  comes  to  the  trap 
at  last,"  which  badly  needs  cleaning,  and  one  new  pur- 
chase attributed  to  Steen  in  the  lists  of  his  work  but  hardly 
typical  or  even  characteristic.  The  subject  is  a  kitchen 
scene.  In  it  we  have  neither  Steen's  charm  of  color 
nor  his  perfection  of  finish.  Yet  the  turn  of  the  woman's 
head,  the  unaffected  merriment  of  her  expression  and  that 
of  the  youth,  and  the  type  to  which  her  face  belongs  suffi- 
ciently recall  such  examples  of  the  artist's  work  as  *^Das 
Galante  Anerbieten*'  at  Brussels  with  which  indeed  it  has 
more  in  common  than  with  any  other  of  Jan  Steen's 
pictures  known  to  me. 

Steen's  own  portrait,  painted  by  himself  and  hanging 
now  in  the  Amsterdam  Museum,  shows  a  face  upon  which 
neither  wild  living  nor  ardent  toil  has  left  unhappy  marks. 
His  serious  eyes  look  frankly  out  from  under  arched 
brows.  His  mouth  is  firm  though  smiling  slightly.  The 
high,  bold  nose  and  strong  chin,  the  well-shaped  head 
and  thoughtful  brow  indicate  a  character  more  decided 
and  more  praiseworthy  than  the  legends  adrift  concern- 
ing his  life  would  lead  us  to  expect  in  him. 


ONE  SIDE  OF  MODERN  GERMAN   PAINTING 


XI 

One   Side  of  Modern  German  Painting 

THE  best  substitutes  for  the  judgments  of  posterity 
are  the  judgments  of  foreigners.  A  group  of  pic- 
tures by  the  artists  of  one  country,  taken  to  another  coun- 
try for  exhibition  and  criticism,  is  subjected  to  something 
the  same  test  as  the  pictures  of  one  generation  coming 
under  the  scrutiny  of  another  generation. 

When  a  collection  of  pictures  by  modern  German  artists 
was  exhibited  in  America  in  1909,  the  American  people 
were  prompt  in  their  recognition  of  a  certain  quality 
which  they  termed  national.  The  critics — many  of  them 
— saw  this  quality  from  the  adverse  side  and  were  far  from 
complimentary  to  the  Germans  in  their  comparisons  be- 
tween American  art  and  German  art,  but  a  general  im- 
pression was  given  of  a  vitality  sufficiently  marked  to 
make  itself  felt  by  the  least  initiated  observer.  A  num- 
ber of  the  pictures  by  the  older  men  had  little  enough 
of  this  vitality,  but  where  it  existed  it  was  so  decided  as 
to  leaven  the  mass.  And  there  was  almost  none  of  the 
sentimentality   characterizing    the   Teutonic   ideal   as   it 

»43 


144  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

had  manifested  itself  in  the  pictures  formerly  brought  to 
this  country. 

Compared,  then,  with  the  paintings  of  American  artists 
and  with  those  of  the  Frenchmen,  whose  work  we  have 
known  so  much  better  than  that  of  any  other  country, 
compared  also  with  the  work  of  the  modern  Spaniards, 
whose  paintings  were  on  exhibition  the  same  winter  at 
the  Hispanic  Museum,  we  find  the  special  character  of 
the  German  painting  to  exist  in  a  resolute  individualism, 
a  determination  to  express  the  inner  life  of  the  artist, 
his  temperament  and  predilections  and  his  mood  at  what- 
ever cost  of  technical  facility.  Expressiveness,  getting  the 
idea  into  circulation,  getting  something  said,  this  appears 
to  be  the  common  goal  of  the  German  painter  of  the  pres- 
ent day. 

In  such  case,  of  course,  the  idea  is  of  particular  impor- 
tance. If  it  is  to  take  precedence  over  purely  esthetic 
qualities  it  is  reasonable  to  expect  it  to  be  an  idea  of  no 
little  importance.  Let  us  examine  some  of  the  painters 
represented  in  the  exhibition  arranged  for  America,  and 
see  whether  in  most  cases  the  idea  is  emotional  as  with  the 
artists  of  China  and  Japan,  and  therefore  peculiarly 
appropriate  to  translation  by  rhythms  of  line  and  har- 
monies of  color,  or  intellectual,  and  therefore  demand- 
ing a  complex  and  difficult  expression  and  the  solution  of 
technical  problems  that  do  not  come  into  the  question  at 


ONE    SIDE    OF    MODERN    GERMAN    PAINTING      1 45 

all  when  nothing  else  is  required  than  to  evoke  an  especial 
mood  or  temper  of  soul. 

The  oldest  of  the  painters  represented  was  Adolf  von 
Menzel,  who  was  born  in  18 15  and  died  in  his  ninetieth 
year.  As  he  began  work  at  an  early  age  his  accomplish- 
ment practically  covers  the  period  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. He  has  been  designated  by  one  of  his  German 
critics  as  three  Menzels  in  one:  the  first,  the  historian  of 
the  Freiderician  period;  the  second,  the  historian  of  his 
own  time,  recording  the  court  life  in  which  he  played 
his  part;  the  third,  the  acute  observer  of  the  life  of  the 
streets  and  workrooms  and  a  commentator  on  the  amus- 
ing details  of  the  passing  show. 

A  number  of  his  sketches  were  shown  at  the  exhibition, 
a  couple  of  landscapes,  a  ballroom  scene  and  a  theater 
subject,  beside  a  little  mediaeval  subject  in  gouache. 
These  displayed  his  dexterity  of  hand  which  was  truly 
astounding,  and  also  his  memory,  as  the  "Theatre  Gym- 
nase"  was  painted  fully  a  year  after  he  left  Paris.  The 
ballroom  supper  was  painted  in  an  ironic  mood  and  the 
gluttony  of  his  fellow  humans,  their  unattractive  per- 
sonalities, their  curious  aspect  of  the  educated  animal, 
appear  with  an  intense  and  pitiless  fidelity  to  the  fact  which 
is  of  the  essence  of  intellectual  realism,  but  which  could 
equally  have  been  achieved  through  the  medium  of  words. 
In  spite  of  a  cultivated  color  sense  and  a  fine  control 


146  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

over  his  instrument  he  was  from  first  to  last  essentially 
an  illustrator.  It  was  difficult  for  him  to  omit  any  detail 
that  would  add  to  the  piquancy  or  fulness  of  his  story, 
however  much  the  omission  might  have  done  for  his 
general  effect.  He  said  himself,  "There  should  be  no 
unessentials  for  the  artist,"  and  he  advised  his  pupils  to 
finish  as  much  as  possible  and  not  to  sketch  at  all.  This 
passion  for  completeness  rarely  accompanies  a  strong 
feeling  for  the  romantic  aspects  of  nature  or  for  atmos- 
pheric subtleties.  Neither  does  the  painter  who  ob- 
serves human  nature  closely  and  represents  it  with  a 
detailed  commentary  upon  its  characteristics  usually  con- 
vey the  impression  of  any  subjective  emotion. 

Menzel  is  no  exception  to  this  rule.  In  his  work  he 
appears  as  emotionless  as  a  machine,  but  his  accomplish- 
ment is  not  mechanical.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  the  record 
of  a  busy,  highly  individuaHzed,  accurate  mind.  A  Berlin 
man,  he  had  the  alertness,  the  clear-cut  effectiveness,  the 
energy,  and  the  coldness  typical  of  a  cosmopolitan  product. 
If  we  compare  his  "Ball  Supper"  in  which  the  glare  of 
lights,  the  elaboration  of  costume,  the  rapacity  and 
shallow  glittering  superficiality  of  a  Court  festivity  are 
presented  almost  as  though  in  hackneyed  phrases,  so 
devoid  is  the  picture  of  any  meaning  beyond  the  obvious, 
with  the  "Steel  Foundry"  in  which  the  unsentimental 
acceptance  of  labor  as  a  necessary  factor  in  civilization 


ONE    SIDE    OF    MODERN    GERMAN    PAINTING      147 

is  conspicuous,  it  is  clear  that  his  mind  was  free  from 
dreams  and  visions  whichever  side  of  society  he  looked 
upon.  In  this  respect  his  influence  is  salutary.  It  is 
like  a  cool  and  wholesome  breeze  blowing  away  all  miasmic 
vapors,  and  there  is  a  positively  exhilarating  quality  in 
his  firm  assumption  of  the  power  of  the  human  being  over 
his  material.  His  workmen  are  men  of  strong  muscle 
and  prompt  brain.  In  the  "Steel  Foundry"  we  see  their 
efficient  handling  of  the  great  bars  of  metal  with  admira- 
tion as  we  should  in  life,  and  we  note  what  in  modern 
times  is  not  always  present  for  notation,  the  intelligence 
and  interest  in  their  faces.  In  one  corner  of  the  room, 
behind  a  screen  or  partition,  a  little  group  is  devouring 
luncheon.  Here  we  strike  once  more  the  note  of  the  ball- 
room supper  in  the  munching  eagerness  of  the  eaters, 
but  seen  in  juxtaposition  with  the  physical  force  and  effort 
of  the  workers  it  ceases  to  be  revolting,  and  seems  to 
symbolize  the  lusty  joy  of  living  with  a  sympathetic  zest 
of  realization. 

In  all  of  Menzel's  work  we  have  this  sense  of  physical 
and  mental  competency.  It  shows  nothing  of  the  abnor- 
mal or  decadent,  and  it  must  also  be  admitted  that  only  in 
a  few  instances  does  it  show  anything  of  esthetic  beauty. 
He  was  able  to  paint  crowds  of  people  and  he  managed 
to  get  a  remarkable  unity  of  effect  in  spite  of  his  de- 
votion to  detail,  but  his  masses  of  light  and  shade  are  not 


148  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

held  in  that  noble  harmonious  relation  achieved  by  the 
peasant  Millet  who  was  Menzel's  contemporary,  his  lines 
have  no  rhythmic  flow,  his  color,  though  often  charming, 
is  seldom  held  together  in  a  unified  tone.  Some  one  has 
called  him  "the  conscience  of  German  painting,"  but  he 
is  more  than  that.  He  is  both  conscience  and  brain.  It 
is  always  possible  to  obtain  an  intellectual  satisfaction 
from  his  point  of  view.     What  is  lacking  is  emotion. 

We  feel  this  lack  in  other  Berlin  masters.  Professor 
Max  Liebermann  is  one  of  the  most  distinguished  of  the 
modern  group,  and  his  large,  cool,  definite  art  is  innocent 
of  the  moving  quality.  He  was  represented  in  the  exhi- 
bition by  a  portrait  of  Dr.  Bode,  a  vigorous  little  compo- 
sition called  "The  Polo-players,"  the  "Flax  Barn  at 
Laren,"  and  "The  Lace  Maker."  The  last  two  were 
especially  typical  of  his  steady  detachment  from  his  sub- 
ject. The  old  lace  maker,  bending  over  her  bobbins, 
suggests  only  absorption  in  her  task.  There  is  no  en- 
nobling of  her  form,  no  idealizing  of  her  features,  no 
enveloping  of  her  occupation  with  sentiment,  nothing 
but  the  direct  statement  of  her  personality  which  is  neither 
subtle  nor  complex  and  the  description  of  what  she  is 
doing.  But  she  is  intensely  real,  more  real,  even,  than 
Menzel's  closely  observed  individuals.  Liebermann,  born 
in  1847,  was  the  leader  of  the  new  tendency  characterizing 
the  Germany  of  the  seventies,  the  tendency  toward  con- 


Courtesy  of  Berlin  Photographic  Comp«ny. 


Peasant  Women  of  Dachauer 

From  a  painting  by  Leibl 


ONE    SIDE    OF    MODERN    GERMAN    PAINTING      149 

stant  reference  to  nature  as  opposed  to  the  old-fashioned 
conventionalism  and  Academic  methods.  There  could 
have  been  no  safer  leader  for  a  band  of  rebels  since  he 
was  the  sanest  of  thinkers  and  worked  out  a  style  in  which 
the  classic  qualities  of  nobility  in  the  disposition  of  lines 
and  spaces  and  remarkable  purity  of  form  played  a  promi- 
nent part. 

Observing  his  "Flax  Barn,"  in  comparison  with  the 
work  of  his  compatriots,  its  fine  freedom  from  triviality 
of  detail  was  apparent,  and  the  beauty  of  its  cool  Hght, 
spread  over  large  spaces  and  diffused  throughout  the 
interior  of  the  low  shed,  made  itself  felt.  One  noted  also, 
as  elements  of  the  picture's  peculiarly  dignified  appeal, 
the  severe  arrangement  of  the  figures  with  the  long  row 
of  workers  under  the  windows,  the  long  threads  of  flax 
passing  over  their  heads  to  the  women  in  the  foreground, 
and  the  almost  straight  line  formed  in  turn  by  these  women. 
The  composition,  quite  geometrical  in  its  precision,  gave 
a  sense  of  deep  repose  in  spite  of  the  vitality  of  the  indi- 
vidual figures  and  the  impression  they  made  of  being  able 
to  turn  and  move  at  will,  an  impression  nearly  always 
missed  by  Leibl,  Liebermann's  great  forerunner  in  the 
painting  of  humble  Hfe.  We  get  much  the  same  austere 
effect  from  the  almshouse  pictures  of  old  men  and  women 
on  benches  in  the  open  square,  always  arranged  in  a  geo- 
metrical design,  and  always  calm  in  gesture  and  mild 


150  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

in  type,  which  appear  from  time  to  time  in  the  foreign 
exhibitions  of  Liebermann's  work. 

Liebermann  has  done  for  the  Germans  something  of 
what  Millet  did  for  the  French.  He  has  built  his  art  upon 
the  daily  life  of  the  poor,  but  while,  like  Millet,  he  has 
introduced  a  monumental  element  into  his  work,  it  is 
clearer,  more  closely  reasoned,  more  firmly  knit  than 
Millet's  art,  and  at  the  same  time  less  emotional.  Lieber- 
mann's hospitality  to  purely  technical  ideas,  his  interest 
in  problems  of  light  and  air,  his  diligent  analysis  of  mo- 
tion, his  ability  to  translate  a  scene  from  the  life  of  the 
laboring  class  without  sentimentality,  without  prettiness 
or  eloquence  or  any  of  the  attributes  that  catch  the  multi- 
tude, give  to  his  art  a  touch  of  coldness  that  is  not  without 
its  charm  for  those  who  care  for  a  highly  developed  orderly 
product  of  the  mind. 

Most  of  the  Berlin  men  who  are  in  any  degree  notable 
share  somewhat  in  this  attribute.  Arthur  Kampf,  although 
he  has  less  than  Liebermann  of  cool  detachment,  has 
both  elegance  and  gravity.  He  could  hardly  have  had  a 
better  representation  by  any  one  or  two  canvases  than 
by  the  "Charity"  and  the  "Two  Sisters"  of  the  Ameri- 
can exhibition.  In  the  first  he  depicts  a  street  scene  with 
its  contrasts  of  poverty  and  wealth.  A  man  and  woman 
in  evening  dress,  returning  from  their  evening's  pleasure, 
are  besought  by  poor  people  clustering  around  a  soup 


ONE    SIDE    OF    MODERN    GERMAN    PAINTING       151 

stall  and  drop  coin  into  the  insistent  hands.  The  smok- 
ing caldron  of  soup  in  the  center  and  the  circle  of  sharply 
differentiated  faces  form  an  admirable  composition,  the 
apparently  accidental  lines  of  which  play  into  a  dignified 
linear  scheme.  The  "Two  Sisters"  reveals  the  influence 
of  Velasquez  in  its  flat  modeling  and  subtle  characteriza- 
tion, and  in  its  atmospheric  grays  enlivened  with  geranium 
reds.  Both  of  these  pictures  indicate  a  modern  temper  of 
mind  in  the  fluency  of  their  technique  and  the  realism 
of  their  treatment  together  with  the  attention  paid  to  the 
tonal  quality  and  to  the  character  of  the  space  composi- 
tion. Kampf,  however,  although  a  young  man  —  he  was 
bom  in  1864  —  has  passed  through  many  phases  of  de- 
velopment which  are  recorded  in  his  many-sided  art. 
His  subjects  range  from  the  historical  themes  of  his 
wall  decorations  at  Magdeburg  and  Aachen  through  por- 
traiture in  which  he  grasps  characters  essentially  diverse 
and  suggests  with  unerring  instinct  the  dominant  quality, 
scenes  of  labor  as  in  his  "Bridge-Building,"  scenes  of 
brutality  and  excitement  as  in  his  "Bull-fight,"  scenes 
from  the  drama  of  the  Biblical  story,  scenes  of  domestic 
life  as  in  his  delicately  humorous  picture  of  the  absorbed 
reader  eating  his  breakfast  with  the  morning  paper 
propped  up  in  front  of  him,  and  scenes  of  peaceful 
holiday-making  among  the  poor  as  in  his  idyllic  "Sun- 
day Afternoon"  which  shows  a  peasant  boy  playing  his 


152  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

harmonicum  under  the  trees,  with  his  old  father  and 
mother  sitting  by  in  placid  enjoyment.  Various  as  these 
pictures  are  and  closely  as  the  manner  has  in  each 
case  been  adapted  to  the  special  subject,  we  nowhere 
miss  the  note  of  individuality,  although  in  such  a  por- 
trait as  that  of  the  Kaiser,  which  was  shown  in  Amer- 
ica, it  unquestionably  is  subdued.  Neither  do  we  miss 
the  note  of  locality.  Born  at  Aachen,  Kampf  is  a 
true  Rheinlander  and  one  of  his  German  critics 
notes  that  we  must  look  to  this  fact  for  the  explana- 
tion of  his  special  qualities,  declaring  that  without  the 
Rheinlander's  cheerfulness  and  energetic  temperament, 
and  without  the  background  of  the  ancient  Rhen- 
ish culture,  he  would  be  inconceivable.  On  the  other 
hand  his  turning  to  drama  and  romance  for  his  inspi- 
ration speaks  of  his  Duesseldorfian  training  and  his 
realism  of  representation  allies  him  to  Menzel.  At 
forty-two  he  was  made  president  of  the  Royal  Academy 
of  Art  in  Berhn,  and  it  is  probable  that  the  whole- 
some Rhenish  energy  of  which  his  critic  speaks  will 
save  him  from  sinking  into  the  formalism  of  the  aca- 
demic tradition. 

In  his  art,  however,  as  in  that  of  his  compatriots,  it  is 
apparent  that  the  world  of  ideas  is  the  world  in  which  he 
lives,  and  he  works  to  express  his  mind  rather  than  his 
soul,  his  thoughts  rather  than  his  emotions,  if  we  follow 


ONE    SIDE    OF    MODERN    GERMAN    PAINTING     153 

the  indefinite  and  arbitrary  division  between  thought  and 
feeling  that  does  service  as  a  symbol  of  a  meaning  diffi- 
cult to  express  clearly. 

There  were  other  interesting  painters  represented  in  the 
Berlin  group  at  the  American  Exhibition,  Otto  Engel, 
Fritz  Berger,  Hans  Hartig  —  and  of  all  it  is  more  or 
less  true  that  the  idea  in  their  work  is  more  important 
than  the  feeling.  It  is  true  also  that  the  tradition  of  the 
peasant  Leibl,  a  great  painter,  but  invariably  cold,  rests 
upon  most  of  them.  His  wonderful  manipulation  of 
pigment  is  equaled  by  none  of  them,  but  his  accurate,  de- 
tached observation,  his  balanced  rendering,  the  firmness 
of  his  method,  have  entered  more  or  less  into  their  scheme 
of  art.  And  it  is  to  be  noted  that  his  ideas  and  theirs 
are  ideas  appropriate  to  the  painter's  medium.  Menzel's 
literary  bent  is  not  shared  by  them,  his  predilection  for  a 
story  to  illustrate  almost  never  appears  among  the  younger 
Berlin  painters,  and  he  cannot  in  any  real  sense  be  con- 
sidered their  prototype. 

When  we  turn  to  the  older  members  of  the  modern 
Munich  school  we  find  the  influence  of  Boecklin  domi- 
nant. Arnold  Boecklin,  a  Swiss  by  birth,  and  possessed 
of  the  Swiss  ingenuity  of  mind,  has  been  the  subject  of 
endless  discussion  among  the  Germans  of  the  present 
day.  He  exhausted  his  very  great  talent  in  painting  a 
symbolic  world,  and  by  his  appreciation  of  the  value  of 


154  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

coherence  he  made  his  paintings  impressive.  They  are 
each  a  perfectly  coherent  arrangement  of  parts,  making 
a  whole  which  has  the  appearance  of  simplicity,  however 
numerous  the  elements  composing  it  may  be.  By  a  com- 
bined generalization  and  intensity  he  turned  the  actual 
world  which  he  studied  closely  enough,  into  his  own  un- 
reality. Thus,  in  his  Italian  landscapes,  he  reveals  the 
architectonic  structure  of  his  scene  stripped  of  all  inci- 
dental ornament,  the  upright  and  horizontal  lines  left 
severe  and  uncompromised,  and  the  blue  of  the  heavens 
and  the  sea,  and  the  dark  green  of  the  cypresses,  pushed 
to  an  almost  incredible  depth.  Everything  is  more  sig- 
nificant than  in  nature,  yet  nature  has  provided  the  ele- 
ments of  significance.  It  is  in  his  ability  to  see  things 
whole  and  to  co-ordinate  the  selected  details  that  Boecklin 
is  most  an  artist.  This  largeness  of  generalization  gives 
him  power  over  the  imagination,  and  is,  perhaps  the  only, 
certainly  the  chief  source  of  his  power.  His  color  by  its 
very  intensity  overdoes  the  intended  effect.  The  imagi- 
nation instead  of  being  stimulated  is  sated,  and  his  obvious 
symbolism  fails  to  pique  the  curosity.  Moreover,  his 
handhng  of  paint  lacks  sensitiveness.  He  has  something 
of  the  disregard  shown  by  the  English  painter  Watts  for 
the  beauty  inherent  in  his  material  which  might  as  well 
be  clay  or  textile  as  pigment  in  his  hands.  But  his  appre- 
ciation of  the  effect  upon  the  mind  of  noble  arrangements 


Fiddling  Death 

From  a  portrait  by  Arnold  Boeckltn 


ONE    SIDE    OF    MODERN    GERMAN    PAINTING       155 

of  space  and  mass  raises  him  to  a  much  higher  place  as  an 
artist  than  he  can  be  said  to  occupy  as  a  painter. 

Franz  von  Stuck  is  BoeckHn's  most  distinguished  fol- 
lower. When  we  turn  from  the  examples  of  BoeckHn's 
work,  by  no  means  the  most  impressive  examples,  ex- 
hibited in  America,  to  Stuck's  "Inferno"  we  perceive 
both  the  influence  of  Boecklin  and  the  powerful  indi- 
viduality that  mingles  with  it. 

There  is  BoeckHn's  insistence  upon  the  symbol,  and 
upon  the  bodying  forth  of  things  unseen,  there  is  the  solid 
violence  of  color,  there  is  the  pompous  statement  of  the 
half-discerned  truths  which  more  sensitive  artists  are  con- 
tent to  whisper.  But  there  is  also  a  splendid  arabesque 
of  line  and  a  deeper  reading  of  the  spiritual  content  of  the 
subject. 

If  we  compare  Stuck  with  William  Blake  whose  fancy 
also  was  haunted  by  Dantesque  conceptions,  we  see  how 
much  more  impressive  Blake's  visions  of  the  unreal  world 
are  and  we  find  the  reason  in  their  swift  energy  of  concep- 
tion and  in  the  artist's  tenacity  in  holding  his  conception. 
With  both  Boecklin  and  Stuck  we  feel  that  the  manner  of 
rendering  the  conception  becomes  more  important  than 
the  initial  conception,  and  this  seldom,  if  ever,  is  true  of 
Blake.  In  spite  of  BoeckHn's  superb  restraint  in  the  dis- 
position of  his  masses,  when  it  comes  to  color  he  is  at 
the   mercy  of  the   material  pigment    and   permits   it   to 


156  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

obliterate  where  it  should  enhance  and  reveal.  His  forms, 
also,  and  even  more  than  Stuck* s,  lose  vitality  under  the 
weight  of  significance  forced  upon  them,  while  Blake's 
emerge  from  the  blank  panel  clean  and  strong  and  un- 
encumbered. We  feel  that  Blake,  with  all  his  struggle 
to  utter  truth  by  means  of  symbol,  never  allows  his  mind 
to  lose  the  idea  that  "Living  form  is  eternal  existence," 
but  in  Boecklin's  pictures  "Uving  form"  is  often  buried 
beneath  his  colored  clays. 

Thus  we  see  that  it  cannot  truly  be  said  of  him  and  his 
followers  that  the  idea  is  of  first  importance  to  them.  It 
is  their  material  that  is  of  first  importance,  otherwise  they 
would  learn  so  to  subordinate  their  material  as  to  support 
and  disclose  their  idea.  This  is  the  more  obvious  that 
their  idea  is  emotional  and  therefore  perfectly  suited  to 
expression  through  the  medium  of  art.  Liebermann's 
ideas  although  they  are  intellectual  are  not  of  a  kind  that 
cannot  appropriately  be  translated  into  pictures,  and  his 
respect  for  them  leads  him  to  fit  his  manner  of  expression 
closely  to  their  requirements.  Like  Leibl  he  is  a  painter 
and  a  thinker  in  one,  and  the  faculties  of  the  two  work 
in  complete  coordination. 

Painters  of  Boecklin's  type,  on  the  other  hand,  wish  to 
produce  in  the  observer  a  strong  emotion,  but  they  become 
slaves  to  their  medium  because  their  own  emotion  is  not 
sufficiently  powerful  to  conquer  their  minds,  which  be- 


ONE    SIDE    OF    MODERN    GERMAN    PAINTING     157 

come  diverted  by  the  colors  and  forms  they  produce.  One 
of  Blake's  swift  upward  soaring  lines  has  more  power  to 
carry  the  imagination  heavenward  than  all  the  versions 
of  Boecklin's  "Island  of  Death." 

Against  Boecklin's  followers,  whose  minds  are  more  or 
less  befogged  by  their  lack  of  appreciation  of  paint  as  a 
means  to  an  end,  we  must  place  Wilhelm  Truebner  who 
is  a  clear  thinker  and  a  great  painter,  with  more  warmth 
than  Liebermann  and  with  a  reticent  color  sense,  a  feeling 
for  expressive  form,  a  love  of  reality,  and  no  apparent 
desire  to  re-invent  the  grotesque.  His  elegance  of  line  in 
itself  sets  him  apart  from  most  of  his  compatriots,  and 
his  knowledge  of  how  to  extract  from  his  color  scheme 
its  essential  beauty  is  greater  than  that  of  most  modern 
painters,  whatever  their  nationality.  His  blacks  have 
the  depth  and  luster  without  unctiousness  characteris- 
tic of  black  as  the  great  colorists  use  it,  and  in  his 
touches  of  pale  refined  color  enlivening  a  black  and  white 
composition,  we  have  the  delightful  effect  so  often  given 
by  Manet,  as  of  a  bunch  of  bright  flowers  thrown  into  a 
shadowy  corner. 

If  young  Germany  were  content  to  follow  in  Truebner's 
footsteps  we  should  soon  have  a  revival  of  the  ancient 
craftsmanship  and  conscience  that  animated  Holbein  and 
Diirer.  Young  Germany,  however,  has  other  plans.  To 
learn  of  them  the  reader  is  referred  to  Meier-Graefe's 


158  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

comprehensive  and  stimulating  volume  on  modern  art. 
The  only  representation  of  the  painters  of  the  immediate 
present  given  in  the  American  exhibition  w^as  confined  to 
the  SchoUe  School,  which,  however,  indicates  clearly  the 
creative  impulse  that  is  stirring  in  the  younger  painters. 
"A  warlike  state,"  Blake  wrote,  "never  can  produce  Art. 
It  will  Rob  and  Plunder  and  accumulate  into  one  place 
and  Translate  and  Copy  and  Buy  and  Sell  and  Criticize, 
but  not  Make."  This  has  been  true  of  the  Germans,  but 
the  present  generation  is  bent  upon  making  and  it  is 
natural  that  the  strongest  impulse  toward  originality 
should  come  to  the  Munich  painters  rather  than  to  the 
cosmopolitan  Berlin  men. 

The  Scholle  is  a  Munich  association  consisting  of  a 
group  of  young  men  who,  taking  the  humble  and  fecund 
earth  as  their  symbol,  as  the  title  of  the  society  implies, 
seek  to  get  into  their  painting  the  vigor  and  intensity  of 
life  and  force  which  devotion  to  the  healthy  joys  provided 
by  our  mother  Earth  is  supposed  to  engender. 

They  are  like  the  giant  Antaeus  whose  strength  was 
invincible  so  long  as  he  remained  in  contact  with  the  earth, 
but  who  easily  was  strangled  when  lifted  into  the  upper 
air.  Their  strength  also  melts  into  helplessness  when 
confronted  by  problems  of  atmosphere  and  the  delicate 
veils  of  tone  which  enwrap  the  material  world  for  the 
American  painter. 


ONE    SIDE    OF    MODERN    GERMAN    PAINTING      159 

But  the  energy  of  these  young  Germans  in  their  own 
field  is  something  at  which  to  wonder.  They  remind  one 
of  their  critics  of  a  band  of  lusty  peasant  boys  journeying 
in  rank  from  their  University  to  the  nearest  beer  garden, 
singing  loud  songs  by  the  way.  Leo  Putz,  Adolf  Muenzer, 
Fritz  Erler,  are  the  leaders  of  the  group,  although  Alex 
Salzmann  and  Ferdinand  Spiegel  were  Erler's  collabora- 
tors in  the  famous  Wiesbaden  frescoes  which  offended 
the  taste  of  the  Kaiser.  These  young  men  are  entirely 
capable  of  offending  a  less  conventional  taste  than  the 
Kaiser's,  but  they  all  are  doing  something  which  has  not 
been  done  in  Germany  for  many  a  long  year;  they  are 
busying  themselves  with  the  visible  world  and  painting 
frankly  what  they  see.  It  does  not  matter  in  the  least  that 
in  their  decorative  work  they  give  rein  to  their  fancy  and 
produce  such  symbolism  as  we  find  in  Erler's  "Pestilence," 
or  that  in  the  illustrations  for  Jugend  they  tell  a  story  with 
keen  appreciation  of  its  Hterary  significance.  Their  eyes 
are  open  upon  the  aspect  of  material  things  and  they 
paint  flesh  that  is  palpitating  with  life,  forms  that  live 
and  move,  and  color  that  vibrates. 

Here  again  as  with  Liebermann  and  Truebner  the  idea 
and  the  execution  are  in  harmony,  but  with  the  Scholle 
painters  the  idea  is  apt  to  be  a  very  simple  one,  depending 
upon  straightforward  representation  for  its  impressive- 
ness.     Above  all  it  reflects  the  national  temper  of  mind, 


l6o  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

for  all  these  individualists  are  German  to  the  core  and  not 
to  be  mistaken  for  any  other  race. 

One  characteristic  of  this  national  temper  is  directness. 
Not  necessarily  simplicity,  of  course,  since  the  German 
painter  as  well  as  the  German  writer  has  frequently  com- 
plex thoughts  to  express  and  uses  corresponding  elabora- 
tions of  expression.  But  he  does  not  often  say  one  thing 
while  seeming  to  say  another;  he  does  not  often  give  double 
and  contradictory  meanings  to  the  same  subject.  He 
does  not  present  for  your  contemplation  the  dishearten- 
ing spectacle  of  sophistication  masquerading  as  innocence, 
or  duplicity  masquerading  as  frankness.  To  that  extent 
he  is  an  optimist,  however  deep  his  native  pessimism  may 
go  in  other  directions. 

There  is,  for  example,  a  picture  by  the  French  artist 
Jacques  Blanche,  entitled  "Louise  of  Montmartre,"  and 
known  to  many  Americans,  in  which  the  girl  to  whom 
Paris  irresistibly  calls  is  shown  in  her  boyish  blouse  and 
collar,  her  youthful  hat  and  plainly  dressed  hair,  in  a 
nonchalant  attitude,  pretty  and  plebeian,  with  honest  eyes, 
yet  revealing  in  every  line  of  her  frank  and  fresh  young 
face  the  potentiality  of  response  to  all  the  appeals  made 
by  the  ruthless  spirit  of  the  city.  It  is  impossible  to  dis- 
cern at  what  points  the  artist  has  betrayed  that  artless 
physiognomy  in  order  to  reveal  the  secrets  of  temperament, 
but  the  thing  is  done, 


ONE    SIDE    OF    MODERN    GERMAN    PAINTING      l6l 

It  is  not  what  the  German  is  interested  in  doing.  His 
imagination  works  subjectively,  giving  form  to  his  own 
conceptions,  rather  than  objectively  or  as  an  interpreter 
of  others.  Hence  the  downright,  and,  in  a  sense,  confiding 
aspect  of  so  much  of  this  brave  art.  Hence,  also,  its 
affinity  with  the  American  spirit,  for  the  American  still 
bends  a  rather  unsuspecting  gaze  upon  life  and  accepts 
character  and  temperament  as  they  choose  to  present 
themselves.  The  German,  however,  is  articulate  and 
ratiocinating  where  we  are  more  purely  instinctive.  We 
are  not  inclined  to  reason  about  our  moods  and  we 
seldom  are  able  to  express  them  in  our  literature.  In 
our  art,  on  the  other  hand,  especially  in  our  landscape 
art,  we  manage  to  translate  our  subtlest  emotion.  We 
are  able  to  suggest  what  is  too  delicate  for  analysis, 
and  in  this  we  stand  almost  alone  in  the  painting  of 
the  present  day. 


TWO  SPANISH  PAINTERS 


XII 

Two  Spanish  Painters 

IV  y|  ODERN  art,  particularly  American  art,  owes 
-^^  -^  much  to  Velasquez  and  something  to  Goya,  and 
modern  painters  have  been  prompt  to  acknowledge  their 
indebtedness.  But  there  has  been  a  prevailing  impres- 
sion that  with  Goya's  rich  and  unique  achievement 
Spanish  art  stopped  in  its  own  country  so  completely 
as  to  be  incapable  of  revival.  The  impression  was  dis- 
turbed in  this  country  by  the  appearance  in  the  galleries 
of  the  Hispanic  Museum  in  New  York,  and  also  in  Buffalo 
and  in  Boston,  of  the  work  of  two  modern  Spaniards,  one 
a  painter  who  demonstrated  by  his  methods  and  choice 
of  subjects  that  the  old  Spanish  traditions  and  ideals  had 
not  been  forgotten,  the  other  a  singularly  isolated  indi- 
vidual who  illumined  for  us  a  side  of  Spanish  life  which 
art  previously  had  ignored.  Both  spoke  a  racy  idiom 
and  conveyed  a  sense  of  quickened  vitality  by  freedom 
of  gesture,  unhackneyed  arrangement,  intensity  of  color, 
reality  of  type,  yet  in  their  influence  upon  the  public 
they  were  as  far  as  might  be  asunder. 

i6s 


1 66  ARTISTS   PAST  AND  PRESENT 

Joaquin  Sorolla  y  Bastida  was  born  at  Valencia,  Spain, 
in  1863,  and  began  seriously  to  study  art  at  the  age  of 
fifteen.  He  studied  at  the  Academy  of  his  birthplace 
for  several  years  and  won  there  a  scholarship  entitling 
him  to  a  period  of  study  in  Italy.  He  visited  Paris  also, 
where  he  was  profoundly  impressed,  it  is  said,  by  two 
exhibitions  in  the  French  capital,  one  of  the  work  of 
Bastien  LePage,  the  other  of  the  work  of  the  German 
Menzel.  The  modern  note  is  clearly  felt  in  all  his  later 
painting,  but  certainly  not  the  influence  of  either  Bastien 
LePage  or  Menzel.  The  painter  to  whom  he  bears  the 
most  marked  resemblance  is  Botticelli.  The  spiritual 
languor,  the  melancholy  sentiment,  the  mystical  tendency, 
the  curiosity  and  interest  in  the  unseen  which  are  impor- 
tant characteristics  of  the  Florentine  who  read  his  Dante 
to  such  good  purpose  do  not  appear  in  the  work  of  this 
frank  and  lusty  Valencian,  but  where  else  in  modern 
painting  do  we  find  the  gracile  forms,  the  supple  muscles, 
the  buoyancy  of  carriage,  the  light  impetuosity  of  move- 
ment, and  the  draperies  blown  into  the  shapes  of  wings 
and  sails,  which  meet  us  here  as  in  the  pagan  composi- 
tions of  Botticelli .? 

If  we  glance  at  Sorolla's  young  girls  and  young  boys 
racing  along  the  hot  beach,  or  his  bathers  exulting  in 
their  "water  joy,"  we  recall  at  the  same  moment  the 
"Primavera"  with  its  swift-stepping  nymphs,  the  wind 


TWO    SPANISH    PAINTERS  167 

gods  in  the  "Birth  of  Venus,"  or  the  "Judith"  with  her 
maid  moving  rapidly  along  a  flower-strewn  path.  This 
joy  of  motion  and  this  continual  suggestion  of  youth  and 
vitality  form  the  link  that  binds  together  the  so  dissimilar 
ideals  of  the  old  and  the  modern  master.  Sorolla's 
inspiration  is  by  far  the  simpler.  His  art  reflects  the 
brilliant  sunshine  of  the  Mediterranean  coast,  the  tonic 
quality  of  the  fresh  air,  and  the  unconventionality  of  life 
by  the  sea.  All  his  people  use  natural  gestures  and 
express  in  their  activity  the  untrammeled  energy  of  primi- 
tive life.  In  looking  at  these  children,  and  there  is 
hardly  a  figure  that  has  not  the  naivete  of  childhood,  we 
think  less  of  the  individuals  portrayed  than  of  the  out- 
door freshness  of  Which  they  are  a  part.  They  are  much 
more  spirits  of  nature  than  the  dryads  and  nereids  and 
mermaids  conceived  by  the  Germans  to  express  in  symbol 
the  natural  forces.  Nothing  suggests  the  use  of  models, 
all  has  the  look  of  spontaneity  as  though  the  artist  had 
made  his  notes  in  passing,  without  the  slightest  regard  to 
producing  a  picture,  with  only  the  idea  of  reproducing 
life.  Life,  however,  appears  in  his  canvases  in  a  suffi- 
ciently decorative  form,  although  not  in  the  carefully 
considered  patterns  of  those  artists  with  whom  the  decora- 
tive instinct  is  supreme. 

Observe,    for    example,    the    painting    entitled    "Sea 
Idyl."     Two  children  are  stretched  on  the  beach,  their 


1 68  ARTISTS  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

bright  bodies  wet  and  glistening  and  casting  blue  shadows 
on  the  sands.  They  are  lying  so  close  to  the  water's 
edge  that  the  waves  lap  over  them,  the  boy's  skin  shines 
like  polished  marble  under  the  wet  film  just  passing 
across  it,  and  the  girl's  drenched  garments  cling  with 
sharp  chiseled  folds  to  the  form  beneath  like  the  dra- 
peries of  some  young  Greek  goddess  just  risen  from  the 
sea.  The  insolence  of  laughing  eyes,  the  idle  fumbling 
of  young  hands  in  the  wet  sand,  the  tingling  life  in 
the  clean-cut  limbs,  the  buoyancy  of  the  waves  that  lift 
them  slightly  and  hold  them  above  the  earth,  —  all 
are  seen  with  unwearied  eyes,  and  reproduced  with 
energy. 

The  management  of  the  pigment  in  this  picture  as  in 
many  of  the  others  can  be  called  neither  learned  nor 
subtle.  Apparently  the  artist  had  in  mind  two  inten- 
tions, the  one  to  represent  motion,  the  other  to  represent 
light,  and  he  set  about  his  task  in  the  simplest  way  pos- 
sible, with  such  simplicity,  indeed,  that  the  extraordinary 
character  of  the  result  would  easily  be  missed  by  a  pedant. 
It  has  not  been  missed  by  the  public,  who  have  entered 
with  enthusiasm  into  the  painter's  mood,  perceived  the 
originality  of  his  vision  and  the  joyousness  of  his  art,  and 
have  radiated  their  own  appreciation  of  this  vitaHzed, 
healthful  world  of  happy  people  until  they  have  increased 
the  distrust  of  the  pedant  for  an  art  so  helplessly  popular. 


TWO    SPANISH    PAINTERS  1 69 

The  distrust  is  not  unnatural.  To  follow  the  popular 
taste  would  lead  us  into  strange  errors  in  our  judgments 
of  art,  and  only  rarely  would  produce  a  predilection 
capable  of  lasting  over  a  generation.  How  is  it,  then,  that 
we  fearlessly  may  range  ourselves  on  the  side  of  the 
public  in  admiration  of  Sorolla's  art  ?  Because  the  painter 
has  cast  off  the  slavery  of  the  conventional  vision.  He 
sees  for  himself,  the  rarest  of  gifts,  and  thus  can  well 
afford  to  paint  like  others.  He  spends,  apparently,  but 
little  thought  upon  his  execution,  letting  it  flow  easily 
according  to  his  instinct  for  the  appropriate.  It  is  not  a 
safe  example  to  follow  for  painters  who  do  not  see  with 
unusual  directness.  Often  in  searching  out  refinements 
of  execution  the  eye  discovers  refinements  of  fact  in  the 
scene  to  be  portrayed  and  makes  its  selection  with  greater 
distinction  than  would  be  possible  at  first  sight.  But 
Sorolla's  prompt  selective  vision  flies  to  its  goal  like  a  bee 
to  a  honey-bearing  flower.  He  takes  what  he  wants  and 
leaves  the  rest  with  the  dew  still  on  it.  His  forces  are 
neither  scattered  nor  spent.  His  freshness  is  over- 
mastering, and  with  our  eyes  on  his  creations  we  have 
that  curious  sense  of  possessing  youth  and  health  and 
freedom  which  we  get  sometimes  from  the  sight  of  boys 
at  their  games.  We  are  cheated  into  forgetfulness  of 
the  world's  great  age  and  our  own  lassitudes  and  physical 
ineffectiveness.     This  illusion  is  agreeable  to  the  most 


170  ARTISTS    PAST    AND    PRESENT 

of  us,  hence  our  unreserved  liking  for  Sorolla's  art  which 
produces  it. 

The  art  of  Ignacio  Zuloaga,  on  the  contrary,  produces 
the  opposite  impression  of  complete  sophistication.  In 
place  of  adolescent  exultations  and  ebullient  physical 
activities,  we  find  in  it  the  strange  sorceries  of  a  guileful 
civilization.  There  are  smiling  women  with  narrowed 
eyelids  and  powdered  faces,  old  men  practising  dolorous 
rejuvenations,  laughter  that  conceals  more  than  it  ex- 
presses, motions  that  are  as. calculated  as  those  of  the 
dance,  serpentine  forms,  fervid  passions,  and  underneath 
the  sophistries  a  violent  primeval  temper.  In  spite  of 
the  flowerlike  gaiety  of  the  color  in  rich  costumes,  the 
glint  of  silver,  the  sweet  cool  blues,  the  pale  violets, 
in  the  painter's  versions  of  the  typical  toreador  of  Spain 
the  types  are  bold,  cruel,  and  sullen.  In  spite  of  the 
fragility  and  elegance  of  the  women  on  balconies  under 
soft  laces  the  prevailing  note  is  that  of  undisciplined 
ferocity  of  emotion.  This  too  is  Spain,  but  not  the  Spain 
of  the  beach  and  sea  life. 

The  rather  numerous  examples  of  what  Mr.  Christian 
Brinton  has  called  Zuloaga's  "growing  diabolic  tendency" 
make  it  clear  that  his  art  holds  no  place  for  spontaneity 
and  the  innocence  due  to  ignorance,  but  where  he  keeps 
to  Spanish  subjects  his  work  remains  healthy.  There 
is  the  picture  entitled  "The  Sorceresses  of  San  Milan" 


Courtesy  or  tnc  nispaiuc  society  or  America. 

The  Sorceresses  of  San  Milan 
From  a  painting  by  Zuloaga 


TWO    SPANISH    PAINTERS  171 

in  which  three  old  women  are  seen  against  a  dramatic 
landscape.  These  haggard  jests  of  nature  bring  before 
us  a  Spain  from  which  the  American  finds  it  impossible 
not  to  shrink  with  horror,  but  they  are  rich  in  dramatic 
quality  and  recall  the  power  of  Goya  to  endow  the  abnor- 
mal with  imaginative  splendor  while  holding  to  essential 
truth.  They  are  diabolic,  if  you  will,  but  not  Mephis- 
tophelian.  There  is  the  abstract  horror  in  them  which 
we  associate  with  unknown  powers  of  darkness,  but  not 
the  guile  with  which  we  endow  a  personal  devil.  In 
striking  contrast  to  this  group  are  the  balcony  pictures  in 
which  women  of  ripe  aggressive  beauty  lounge  gracefully 
in  the  open-air  rooms  with  the  same  freedom  of  pose  as 
within  doors,  haughty  yet  frank,  opulent,  languid  yet  ani- 
mated, flowers  that  could  have  bloomed  nowhere  else 
than  under  a  scorching  sun. 

Then  there  is  the  group  of  dancers  and  actors  and 
singers  in  each  of  which  we  find  the  adroit  mingling  of 
the  artificial  with  the  real,  and  the  appreciation  of  the  fact 
that  with  the  people  of  the  stage  much  that  is  artificial  to 
others  becomes  their  reality.  The  most  vivid  of  them 
all  is  Mile.  Lucienne  Breval  as  "Carmen."  The  sinuous 
figure  is  wrapped  in  a  shawl  apparently  of  a  thousand 
colors;  actually,  a  strong  combination  of  yellow,  green, 
and  red.  The  skirt  which  the  singer  gathers  in  one  hand 
and  lifts  sufficiently  to  show  the  small  foot  in  its  red  slip- 


172  ARTISTS    PAST    AND    PRESENT 

per  has  a  dark  vermilion  ground  on  which  is  a  pattern 
of  large  flowers  of  paler  vermilion,  boldly  outlined  with 
blue. 

Over  it  droops  the  dark  fringe  of  the  shawl.  A  crim- 
son flower  is  in  the  dark  hair,  and  the  footlights  cast  an 
artificial  amber  glow  on  the  face.  This  tawny  harmony 
is  seen  against  a  background  of  slightly  acid  green;  at 
the  other  side  of  the  canvas  is  a  little  table  with  two  men 
seated  at  it.  They  look  "made  up,"  in  the  theatrical 
sense,  and  the  table  looks  rather  light  and  rickety;  there 
is  one  solid  natural  stage  property,  the  yellow  jug  on  the 
table  with  its  dull  blue  figure.  The  whole  life  and  reality 
of  the  picture  are  in  the  Carmen  smiling  and  muffled  in 
the  curious  shawl,  as  if  she  were  about  to  move  in  a  fiery 
dance  in  which  her  brilliant  wrappings  would  take  a  part 
as  animated  and  vital  as  her  own.  No  one  but  a  Spaniard 
could  invest  a  garment  with  such  expressiveness. 

"Paulette  as  Danseuse"  is  another  stage  figure.  Here 
again  the  costume  speaks  with  extraordinary  eloquence. 
The  colors  are  green  and  pink,  and  play  delicately  within 
a  narrow  range  of  varied  tones.  Under  the  short  green 
jacket  the  low-cut  bodice  shows  a  finely  modeled  throat 
and  a  chest  that  seems  almost  to  rise  and  fall  with  the 
breath,  so  palpitating  with  life  is  the  fleshlike  surface. 
The  poise  of  the  figure  suggests  that  the  dance  has  that 
moment   ended,   and   the   eyes   and    mouth   are   slightly 


Courtesy  of  the  HUpanic  Society  of  America. 

The  Old  Boulevardier 
From  a  painting  by  Zuloaga 


TWO    SPANISH    PAINTERS  173 

arched.  The  undulating  line  of  the  draperies,  now 
tightly  drawn  about  the  figure,  and  again  billowing  into 
ampler  curves,  suggests  the  rhythm  of  the  dance. 

In  another  canvas  we  see  Paulette  once  more,  this  time 
in  walking  costume,  standing  with  her  hands  on  her  hips 
in  a  daintily  awkward  pose.  Her  lips,  in  the  first  picture 
upturned  at  the  corners,  mouselike,  have  widened  in  a 
frank  smile,  her  eyes  have  lost  their  formal  archness  and 
look  with  detached  interest  upon  the  passing  show,  she 
still  is  supple,  clear  cut,  with  a  flexible  silhouette,  but  her 
gown  would  find  it  impossible  to  dance,  and,  as  before, 
she  and  her  gown  are  one. 

In  "The  Actress  Pilar  Soler,"  on  the  other  hand, 
Zuloaga  dispenses  as  far  as  possible  with  definite  aids  to 
expression.  The  costume  is  undefined;  the  half-length 
figure,  draped  in  black  and  placed  high  on  the  canvas,  is 
seen  against  a  dark  greenish-blue  background.  The  mass 
of  the  silhouette,  unbroken  as  in  an  Egyptian  statue,  but 
with  tremulous  contours  suggesting  the  fluttering  of  life 
in  the  dimly  defined  body,  is  sufficiently  considered  and 
distinguished;  but  it  is  the  modeHng  of  the  face  that  holds 
the  attention,  a  mere  blur  of  tone,  yet  with  all  the  planes 
understood  and  with  a  certain  material  richness  of  im- 
pasto  that  contributes  to  the  look  of  solid  flesh,  the  dark 
of  the  eyebrows  making  the  only  pronounced  accent  — 
a  face  that  becomes  more  and  more  vital  as  you  look  at 


174  ARTISTS    PAST    AND    PRESENT 

it,  with  that  indestructible  vitaHty  of  which,  among  the 
Frenchmen,  Carriere  was  master. 

In  several  other  canvases,  notably  in  the  first  version 
of  "My  Cousin  Esperanza,"  and  the  second  version  of 
"Women- in  a  Balcony,"  Zuloaga  has  caught  this  effect 
of  vague  fleeting  values,  changes  in  surface  so  subtle  as 
to  be  felt  rather  than  seen,  a  kind  of  floating  modeling 
that  suggests  form  rather  than  insists  upon  it.  And  he 
has  done  this  in  the  most  difficult  manner.  Whistler  long 
ago  taught  us  to  appreciate  the  eff'ect,  but  he  worked  with 
thin  layers  of  pigment,  a  sensitive  surface  upon  which 
the  slightest  accent  made  an  impresssion.  Zuloaga,  on 
the  contrary,  works  with  a  full  brush,  and  consequently 
a  more  unmanageable  surface.  He  attains  his  success 
as  a  sculptor  does  against  the  odds  of  his  material,  but  he 
seems  better  to  suggest  his  special  types  in  this  way. 

Often  he  makes  his  modeling  with  the  sweep  of  his 
brush  in  one  direction  and  another.  "Candida  Laugh- 
ing" shows  this  method,  and  so  does  the  "Village  Judge," 
in  which  the  pigment  is  still  more  freely  swept  about  the 
bone  of  the  cheek  and  the  setting  of  the  eye,  telling  its 
story  of  the  way  the  human  face  is  built  up  in  the  frankest 
and  briefest  manner.  With  the  lovely  "Mercedes,"  a 
fragile  figure,  elegant  in  type,  the  workmanship  becomes 
again  less  outspoken.  The  haughty,  graceful  carriage, 
and  the  intense  refinement  of  the. features  that  glow  with 


Courtesy  of  the  Hispanic  Society  of  America. 

Mercedes 
From  a  painting  by  Zuloaga 


TWO    SPANISH    PAINTERS  1 75 

a  pale  light  beneath  the  fine  lace  of  the  scarf,  demand 
and  receive  a  daintier,  more  fastidious  interpretation. 
In  the  portrait  of  Mrs.  F.,  Jr.,  there  is  a  fresher  manner, 
a  breezier,  crisper  feeling  throughout.  The  color  har- 
mony of  gray  and  green  is  cool  and  lively,  the  poise  of  tlje 
figure  lacks  the  touch  of  languor  that  is  present  in  the 
fieriest  of  the  typical  Spaniards.  We  seem  to  have  passed 
into  another  and  cooler  air. 

The  composition  of  this  picture,  too,  is  especially 
admirable.  The  subject  stands,  bending  forward  a  little, 
the  left  hand  resting  on  the  hip,  the  other  fingering  a  string 
of  pearls,  a  gauzy  scarf  is  about  the  shoulder  and  floats 
away  from  the  figure  at  the  hips,  the  sky  is  atmospheric 
and  there  is  a  background  of  trees,  river,  and  bridge. 
At  the  left  of  the  canvas  an  iron  balustrade,  bent  into  free, 
graceful  curves,  comes  into  the  composition,  beautifully 
drawn  and  painted  in  a  just  value,  adding  in  the  happiest 
manner  to  the  decorative  effect. 

This  is  the  class  of  pictures  in  which  Zuloaga  is  at  his 
best.  The  types  oflFer  him  adequate  opportunity  for 
exercising  the  faculty  of  astute  discrimination  with  which 
he  is  gifted,  without  calling  into  play  the  ironic  temper 
that  broods  with  cold  amusement  over  such  a  canvas  as 
"The  Old  Boulevardier"  than  which  cynicism  can  go 
but  little  farther.  It  might  reasonably  be  argued  that 
it  is  only  in  subjects  which  call  forth  as  many  evidences 


176  ARTISTS   PAST  AND   PRESENT 

as  possible  of  the  artist's  temperament  and  character 
that  we  can  fully  measure  his  force.  The  impulse,  how- 
ever, that  turns  his  gaze  toward  those  physiognomies 
that  offer  the  richest  reward  to  the  investigating  scrutiny 
is  a  part  of  his  force,  as  also  his  choice  of  subjects  about 
which  he  can  talk,  as  one  of  his  French  critics  has  put  it 
in  his  own  language. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


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